Chapter 4 – It Seems to Be a Bit of an Issue
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As the warship was gradually nearing its completion after some more time had passed, Renya suddenly felt a certain doubt.
Because the <Mogami> and <Kumano> were now built in addition to the originally-planned <Ouu>, the underground work area had to be expanded, but even if they could increase the space, it’d remain impossible to alter the fact of it being underground.
If you considered it from the side of preventing sabotage during the construction and keeping the construction itself concealed, an underground workstation was beneficial as it was easy to enforce these things, but Renya questioned how they planned to transfer the three battleships to the surface once they were completely finished.
Thinking about it normally, Renya believed that the most pragmatic solution would be to open the ceiling above the workplace to allow the ships to fly out, but the ships did come with a considerable size, no matter how you spun it. If they opened up the ceiling in a reckless, unskilled manner, no one would be able to tell what sort of impact it’d have on the nearby city of Klinge and the facilities around it.
However, once he tried to come up with another smart method, Renya struggled to hit upon a good idea. Deciding that it’d be the best to ask a person who should very likely be aware of a method, Renya visited Frau.
Frau had been involved in the construction of the battleships together with Emil. Right after she joined the builders, she was assigned to be the chief executive on site. But, you could only call that natural since she possessed knowledge in a wide range of fields and neither humans nor elves possessed engineers with skills going above Frau’s. Of course the beastmen were out of the question in this regard, and even amidst the demons you would find few, such as Emil, who would be able to match Frau in engineering skills. But, the leaders of the three countries disapproved of the demons joining the construction, and as such only Emil could join thanks to Renya putting in a good word for her.
Renya suspected that this was likely inevitable, no matter how you looked at it, because it was viewed as a problem for demons, who had been hostile towards the other four races for a long, long time, to be allowed participation in the construction of ships that were designed to fight the demon king. It’d be asking too much to expect the other races to let bygones be bygones and forget all the past transgressions in such a short period of time. It was pretty clear to anyone considering it for a moment that time would be needed to heal those wounds. Rather, people like Shion, who was able to change her opinion of the demons in an instant, were rare.
Thinking that this flexibility in thinking might actually be one of her good points, Renya noticed how he was about to unintentionally relax his expression, and quickly fixed that by bracing himself. Then he faced Frau who was looking his way with the eyes of a dead fish while sitting at a big table.
“Master…? Thanks for coming ~no. Well, please take a seat first ~no.”
Renya accepted the chair offered to him and sat down opposite of Frau while quizzically staring at her. The task of quickly constructing three battleships doubtlessly required a considerable amount of labor and effort. But, Renya hadn’t anticipated that it’d be so taxing that it’d bring even someone like Frau to her knees.
“Somehow you seem to be quite tired, don’t you?”
Frau came up behind Renya’s seat and placed a cup with piping-hot black tea in front of him. Thanking her for that, Renya picked up the cup and was about to take a sip, but suddenly felt like something weird happened just now and stopped the hand holding the cup midway.
“Frau was played by Maryia-ane-sama ~no.”
Without any indication that she had realized Renya’s state, Frau turned her eyes at the various documents piling up in huge stacks right and left of her. Those were the documents pertaining to the various proceedings which Renya was previously forced to scrutinize for hours in his office, but he didn’t understand why those documents were now inside Frau’s room in the underground workplace.
“Maryia-ane-sama didn’t object to the increase of the number of ships to be built all that vehemently ~no. But…”
At that point, Frau stopped speaking and flopped down on the table as if having used up all her strength.
“She has pushed all the office work related to the construction on Frau ~no.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Considering it calmly, even just the construction of one battleship would put a huge strain on anyone working the necessary documents, but now that two more ships had been added, even if the scale was lowered somewhat, it was clear that the increase in extra burden would be unimaginable.
Being well aware of this fact, Mayria had opted to outsource all the paperwork to Frau, very likely in order to make Frau give up. Renya thought that he’d have immediately given up on constructing two more ships if he was in Frau’s shoes, but it went beyond Mayria’s calculations that Frau would handle all the paperwork thrown her way by herself.
But, even if she managed to finish the paperwork, it was still an amount that made Renya and Mayria throw in the towel. As might be expected, even Frau found herself hard-pressed to finish the paperwork while having energy left.
“You cannot describe something like document processing as part of a silky’s normal duty ~no.”
“Really?” Renya asked while accepting Frau handing him a plate with cookies and tea-cakes.
He looked back, feeling like he’d seen something weird after all, but no one was there anymore. Once he turned his head back to the front while puzzled by the strange events, he met eyes with Frau who was nibbling on a cookie with her chin slovenly resting in her hands.
“That’s quite rare for you, Frau.”
So far as it went, Frau held the position of Head Maid and as such it was new for Renya to see Frau act so slovenly in front of him. Because of that, he reflexively commented on it like that, but it immediately caused Frau to blush, followed by her correcting her seating posture in a hurry.
“S-So, Master, what sort of business do you have with Frau ~nano?”
It was a blatant change of topics to cover up her own blunder, but Renya didn’t intend to actually blame Frau for it anyway and hence he went along with her ploy.
“There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“If it’s Frau’s three sizes; those are top secret ~no. But, if you say you want to know them at any cost, it’s not like Frau cannot make a special exception for you ~no.”
“I can tell as much by simply looking at you, you know?” From the top, 60-53…”
“You shouldn’t trust pure eye measurements ~no!”
With her face becoming even redder, Frau tried to hide her own body by twisting away from Renya’s eyes while hugging herself. Seeing that, Renya snorted, clearly not understanding the point of her acting embarrassed about it after all this time. At the end of the day, Frau had been frequently clinging to and hugging Renya’s body. If Renya added his eye measurements to those experiences, it became a walk in the park for him to estimate her body’s sizes. And the accuracy of his measurements was evident from Frau’s reactions, too. Even if they weren’t 100% accurate, they seemed to be fairly close.
“One cannot be too careful ~no. It sounds like Frau’s cup-size will be exposed very soon. How scary ~no.”
“What are you even talking about? It’s A or AA, right?”
“Frau is entering her growth spurt ~no!” Frau snarled with a threatening voice, baring her teeth.
While wondering whether fairies actually grew in the first place, Renya silently waited for Frau to regain her composure. It seemed like he could have quite a bit of fun with teasing Frau over this, but continuing like that would result in the conversation getting completely derailed.
The one deviating from the main topic first was Frau, and Renya only went along with it, but the topic she had started with the very likely aim of making Renya falter ended up terribly backfiring on her.
“Frau has underestimated the power of Master’s eyes ~no. Eventually Frau is going to measure Master’s size as well~no.”
“Measuring the three sizes of a guy bears no meaning whatsoever, does it?”
Renya couldn’t understand how it’d be any sort of problem for him if she knew his body’s measurements, but Frau’s next line made his face, as might be expected, cramp up.
“Frau is going to measure the length of little Renya-kun ~no.”
“Oi, give it a rest. If you do, you got a fight coming for you.”
Frau’s words were somewhat vague, but since Renya clearly knew what she was hinting at, he threatened her relatively seriously. Frau took care of most of Renya’s daily necessities and as such she’d have more than enough opportunities to get a clear measurement. Spending his days while having to be constantly wary of her giving it a try was terrifying in Renya’s eyes.
In any case, I’d feel like strangling myself, if one day Frau suddenly reported how many centimeters little Renya-kun has, Renya believed. That’s something I must prevent at all costs.
Renya glared at Frau, causing her to furiously shake her head and hands, appealing that she had no plans to put her words into practice.
“P-Putting that aside, Master, let us get back to the main topic ~no.”
Renya continued to scowl at her for a short while even after she adjusted the direction of their conversation in panic, but after seeing her shake her head violently a second time, he finally softened his stare somewhat and confronted her with the matter which had moved him to visit Frau’s room in the first place.
“It has to do with the battleships you’re currently building.
“What is wrong with the ships built by the Fraus with blood and tears ~no?”
Renya got somewhat irked by a strange feeling when he heard her mention a plural for herself, but deciding to consider it to be his imagination, he moved on.
“I’d think you have to get the ships outside after you finish building them underground, correct?”
“Of course ~nano. But, that is a matter after we have trained a crew for steering them, unveiled the ships to the leaders of the various nations, and held Master’s engagement announcement ~nano.”
At the end, she added some words he didn’t really want to hear. Renya faced Frau with a weary expression, but without trying to dive into this, Frau swiftly continued to speak.
“If we are going to do it anyway, we might as well use the deck of the <Ouu> for it ~no. Plans have been drawn up for Master and Shion-ane-sama to appear side-by-side with the stage gradually rising ~no.”
“If you don’t stop that at once, I’ll reconsider firing that sorcery cannon of yours.”
“Would it be better for you two to appear on a gondola from above ~no?”
“Aren’t you kinda mixing this up with a wedding ceremony?”
“Frau feels like Sharing the First Bite has a nice ring to it ~no.”
Renya wondered where she got that knowledge from, but then realized that the source for all her knowledge of his former world had to be himself, causing him to despair.
“That’s not being done during the announcement of an engagement.”
“Master, every tradition needs to have a beginning ~no.”
Being told so with a serious face and tone, Renya didn’t know what he should answer. After all, the argument that it wasn’t done like that stemmed from his former world. However, it didn’t mean that it had to be used as common sense in this world as well.
Naturally, Renya didn’t know about the customs upheld during engagement announcements and wedding ceremonies in this world. If Frau insisted on such things being done during the engagement announcement as common sense, he wouldn’t have any means to refute this. Noticing that, Renya concluded that it seemed smarter to gather some information about the traditions over here, before Frau started some weird nonsense that also involved others like the archduchess.
“For the time being, don’t over do it… Keep it at a level that won’t tire me out.”
Even though it’s not like I’m claiming to strike while the iron is still hot, I think it’d be better to check back with Mayria and Keith, who are rather grounded in common sense, before Frau can finish her preparations, Renya thought while raising from his chair.
“You are going back ~nano?”
“Yeah, I have something to take care of.”
Compared to this issue, the initial reason for coming here doesn’t really matter all that much. After all, that issue is something that will naturally become clear with time, even without me trying to force an answer now. Instead, getting confirmation on how engagement announcements are handled takes a much higher precedence, Renya switched his thinking.
“Anyway, make sure to not push yourself too much, okay?”
“I know ~no. Master, Frau would be happy if you could visit Frau every once in a while ~no. Frau will welcome you anytime ~nano.”
Frau waved a hand at Renya as left her room. Somehow returning the wave, Renya steered his feet towards military-related facilities first, thinking he might find Keith over there. His pace didn’t seem like he was in any sort of rush, but you couldn’t really call it calm either.
“Master apparently didn’t notice until the very end ~nano.”
“It seems like he found it faintly suspicious ~nano. But, it cannot be helped since he was preoccupied with something else ~no.”
“Should Frau precede him and match stories with Keith and Maryia-ane-sama ~no?”
“…Let’s not ~no. Frau doesn’t hate joking around, but Frau would be troubled if it caused Master to worry ~no.”
“Because he is the bridegroom?”
“Frau didn’t expect that he would direct his bloodlust at Frau ~no…”
It went so far that he didn’t realize the conversation between the Fraus he left behind inside the room.
◆◇◆
On a certain day, not long after the conversation between Renya and Frau took place, Renya was practicing sword swings on Klinge’s training ground for soldiers since he felt depressed from all the paperwork he had to tackle most recently. Mid-swing he was addressed by Frau, who had arrived on the training ground while reeling somewhat.
He stopped his training, grabbed the towel around his neck, and started to wipe away the faint sheen of sweat while looking her way. Renya had been practicing with his upper body naked since he expected to sweat anyway, but had constantly felt the uncomfortable leering of Shion and Emil, who had been watching from slightly away after requesting to be allowed to observe his training regimen for supposed future reference.
Disregarding their looks, he focused on Frau as she approached.
“Master, you were in the middle of training ~no? You sure work hard ~no. But why are you training alone ~nano?”
It was still daytime and the sun was still standing high in the firmament. Usually it wouldn’t be weird to spot several regular soldiers training here around this time. And yet, the place was deserted except for Renya.
Renya silently readied his sword in front of Frau, who was puzzled by this abnormal situation, and at the same time as he slowly raised his katana, he disappeared. He moved so quickly that Frau’s eyes couldn’t follow him, before unleashing the slash.
Re-utilizing the foot he used to step in for kicking off the ground, he explosively moved sideways while brandishing his katana to the side in a sweep. Moreover, he then stepped in forward again, rounding up his movement by slashing his katana down.
Each time a sequence of actions was thoroughly and precisely performed, the ground shook fiercely and sand violently whirled into the air.
Eventually Renya lightly leaped back as if to cut through the cloud of sand and then returned his sword into its scabbard in a slow, deliberate motion while managing to land on the same spot where he had started by disappearing.
And now Frau also understood why Renya was alone in this place. To be very blunt, his actions were way too scary. Anyone would feel a danger to their lives by just being present on the training ground.
Since it was Renya, Frau believed that he wouldn’t get an innocent bystander involved, even if he moved at a speed beyond Frau’s ability to follow with her eyes. But, if they ran into him by freak chance and took those slashes with their body, they’d suffer heavy injuries if lucky, but most likely die on the spot.
Frau ended up keenly sensing such a premonition.
Moreover, from Renya’s point of view, he might be holding back quite a bit, but if those were reasonably precise training movements, Frau didn’t even want to imagine what would happen to anyone on the receiving end.
“Did you understand?”
Frau bobbed her head in consent. Frau considered Klinge’s soldiers to be quite outstanding. The same could also be said about their mental fortitude and backbone, but no matter how resolved to die when facing an enemy they might be, dying after getting dragged into Renya’s training was naturally something they refused.
Considering it like that, Frau looked at Shion and Emil who had been staring at Renya while sitting on the ground, holding their knees, and not moving a bit. Under these circumstances where even veteran soldiers get cold feet, these two girls keep watching Renya without fearing him, trying to run away, or attempting to defend themselves.
It couldn’t be helped that Frau felt stunned about the sort of mental fortitude these two had to have.
Do they believe that there’s not the slightest chance for Renya to cause them any harm with his training, or couldn’t they suppress their desire to look at Renya’s half-nude appearance even while knowing that it could put their lives at risk? If I judge it based on how these two don’t show any hint of wanting to tear their eyes off Renya, Frau estimates by gut feeling that it must be the latter reason, Frau curbed her temples, feeling a light headache.
“So, did something happen for you, who has been secluded in the underground workshop all the time, to come out while the sun is still up?”
Having her mind pulled back to reality by Renya’s question, Frau recalled why she had visited this place and faced Renya.
“Right ~no. Frau has come to notify you, Master ~no.”
“What’s up? Is it such a crucial matter that you have to come here in person?” Renya asked while wiping the sweat off his neck with his towel.
Frau slightly pushed out her chest and declared, “The underground construction’s objectives have been met ~no. In line with this, Frau has scheduled to send written invitations for the unveiling to the important people of the various countries. Furthermore, Mater’s engagement will be announced during the unveiling ~no.”
“That comes somewhat unexpected.”
Going by his own calculations, just building one warship should require quite a few days. And because the number had increased to three in total, the total number of days needed to finish all of them should have increased in proportion. Renya thought that the event mentioned by Frau would still be far off in the future.
Accordingly, it was only understandable for him to be surprised now that he was told it’d be held very soon.
“How come you’re so fast with this?”
“That is easy ~no. The ships being built this time mostly consist of their exterior hull ~nano.”
A battleship as Renya imagined it has a machine room, all sorts of electrical systems, and a wild mix of various types of gauges, showing data related to the ship’s interior and exterior. However, this world had almost no technology related to machinery. Instead they used magic art for everything.
In short, as long as you built its shape as a battleship and added some degree of interior design, the rest would wholly pertain to the magic devices installed inside the ship. In such a case, it’d be no problem whatsoever to unveil the ships as weapons against the demon king, if they managed to finish the outward exterior to an extent that would make the ship look like a battleship.
“Generally, these ships aren’t stuffed with machines and don’t use propellers either, as your knowledge suggests ~no.”
“That makes sense. I mean, the ships are supposed to fly, so yeah.”
Even if they tried to add propellers, it’d be necessary to use fairly big ones to gain enough thrust to make a battleship fly. And if they installed such huge propellers, those things would be quite bulky.
Seeing how floating and propulsion could be handled with magic either way, it’d be pointless to add any devices or machines to make the ships float or fly forward.
“On top of that, there’s no need to live inside them to begin with. Or to put it very harshly, it won’t pose any problem even if the ships are hollow inside ~no. As long as it allows for sorcery code to make it fly to be drawn on it so that it can transport the soldiers, it will perform its duty ~no.”
Renya thought it was a terrible way to put it, but the three battleships were built for the sake of attacking the demon king’s territory, and thus it’d suffice for them to bring the heroes and soldiers to the battlefield. Or to go even further, it wouldn’t be really necessary to fly back with them either as long as they managed to defeat the demon king, so the whole project had more than enough leeway to be half-assed to the extent of it being okay as long as the ships somehow managed to make that one trip.
“I think that will make the journey for those being transported quite the ordeal, though.”
Tightly stuffing people into a box with the ability to travel and sending them to their destination was nothing Renya really wanted to do.
In order to calm his mind, Frau said, “That right now was just the extreme ~nano. In reality, we will build a proper form and interior for the ships ~no.”
“I feel like that alone will take a reasonable amount of time…”
Even considering that the ships would have absolutely nothing related to machinery, it’d still consume a big amount of time to design an interior with proper sections, Renya assessed.
Frau answered, “Miss Fairy will get it done in a night ~no.”
“Are you really going to do it in one night?”
“Ah, Frau has to take her words back a bit ~nano… As might be expected, even Frau would very likely die from trying to finish this in one night ~no.”
Frau corrected herself in a hurry, but it didn’t seem to change what she wanted to say and she apparently had the goal to somehow finish the construction on time by assisting the workers with all sorts of means as a fairy who almost didn’t need any sleep.
Renya had evaluated her to be a fairy outside any norm, but while he strongly felt how that evaluation was proven true once again, he didn’t try to voice it out.
“So, for that reason, you don’t need to get all worked up, Master, but Frau would like you to prepare yourself ahead of time ~no.”
“Well…at any rate, it’s already at the stage of an engagement, so yeah.”
“I see. I’ll finally be able to have someone I can call husband,” Shion muttered seriously with her cheeks blushing faintly while Emil was glaring at her with half-opened eyes from the side.
But, being in a dream-like state, Shion didn’t notice that look at all.
“Once this battle is over, I’ll marry Renya, huh…? Makes me feel bashful.”
“Shion, somehow this sounds like a flag, so I think it’d be best for you to not mention this.”
“Don’t worry, Renya. I’ll protect you. I mean, we’ll become…family after all.”
“Haaah…?”
“It’s really great that I was able to meet you, Renya. I thank the goddess for this.”
Renya sank into silence, unable to return everything as she was looking at him with slightly moist eyes. The question whether she meant the little goddess, who had sent him into this world, or that twin-tailed archangel, who had shown up here out of nowhere and was just hanging around without doing much of anything, when mentioning a goddess to thank to crossed Renya’s mind, but rather than that, he had that strange feeling that Shion had lined up flags, which shouldn’t be raised, with the series of lines she had casually dropped.
Once he took a quick look to his side, he noticed that Frau was apparently embracing the same feeling. She was staring at the absent-minded Shion with an indescribably tart expression.
“Master, if the husband dies, a woman will become a widow ~no. So, what happens to a man once his wife dies ~no?”
“I’m not really sure what I should think about you telling me something so ominous, but…I think he should be called a widower. By the way, I hear widows grow beautiful flowers while widowers hatch maggots.”
“As long as Frau is around, she won’t allow Master to live in such an unhealthy environment ~no.”
“Aren’t you somehow tending heavily towards raising weird flags as well?”
Having that pointed out, Frau blocked her mouth with her hands, but Renya judged with his exhausted mind, Isn’t it way too late now that she has already raised the flag anyway?
Renya intended to pay plenty of attention to avoid anything like that happening in some freak event, but the concept of fail-safe didn’t exist during battle, and because of that, he wanted others to abstain from using too ominous wordings.
“You staying silent here tells me that I’ve struck gold with my question, but it’s my style to deliberately cut into such matters, isn’t it? Hehe,” Emil said with a laugh.
But, once Renya sent her a death stare, implicitly telling her to stay out of this, Emil said something that surprised the other three with her usual tone, “I mean, we’re talking about Renya here, so a second and third will be decided soon enough anyway. There’s no need to worry, is there?”
“That’s…”
The one popping up in Renya’s head first was Mayria for some reason. Maryia had been forced to do the mundane things no one really paid attention to, given that the situation was developing in a way that actually forced him to take some sort of responsibility, the idea that he had to treat her equally to her big sister, even if he didn’t know how much blame he’d draw upon himself for marrying two sisters, was festering in a corner of Renya’s mind. However, without being aware of that, Emil started to speak about someone completely different.
“For example, someone like me.”
“Why, partner?” Shion asked Emil after having returned to reality from her dream-like trance while looking truly puzzled.
Using a tone similar to that of a teacher who was kindly and thoroughly explaining a class to a bad student, Emil said, “Even though our numbers have dropped sharply, demons are still a powerful race in the eyes of the other races. Wouldn’t it be logical for them to plan measures to restrict the demons after the demon king is gone?”
“Do you intend to make me a collar for the demons then?” Renya asked.
It wouldn’t be weird to call Renya the strongest amidst the bundle of powerful beings, but by being intimate with Emil, who could rightfully be considered as most influential among the present demons as demon hero and noble daughter,he would become a deterrent against the demons. Emil argued that it wouldn’t be strange for people to conceive it like that.
“The elves should stay quiet about this either. I mean, Croire is a part of your inner circle.”
“The beastmen are…out of the race at this point, I guess. They seem to aim at winning over Kurz-kun rather than you, Renya.”
“The dragonoids…well, they’ve got no choice but to give up.”
“Wouldn’t they send over anyone as long Renya desired it? Some woman with a beautiful look.”
“Maybe. Incredible, Renya. Doesn’t it look like you could conquer all the beauties of each race by yourself?”
Without knowing how he should answer Emil who was laughing suggestively, he hesitated for a bit, before eventually replying, “Wouldn’t that make me totally look like some harem asshole then?”
“”You notice that only now!?””
“No, wait, you’re getting surprised at the wrong thing here. So far as it goes, I haven’t made a move on anyone, you know? There should be no reason to label me as such a guy,” Renya put strength into his voice, believing that he had to firmly object against Shion and Emil’s harmonized outcry.
Thinking that it wouldn’t be odd for outsiders to assess it just like that, regardless of the ones involved actually thought about this, Frau watched the three starting to kick up a fuss while shrugging her shoulder and assessing that it’d be better for her to slowly inform them about the detailed schedule and the preparations after they calmed down.
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