Chapter 467

Day 106 – Morning, Gamerein Commonwealth, Royal Castle

A wall lined with Filthy Fluffy Middle-Aged Men. The kemomimi maids were lined up in the back as well, but the burly Middle-Aged Men were packed tight in the front row, blocking the view. And whenever I try to look, I sense a sharp glare filled with killing intent!? How come they can tell where I’m trying to look with Rajingan that can bend space itself? Ah, someone behind me just drew their sword! This is not good.

「Have a safe trip, Pres-sama! All members, salute!」

「「「「Have a safe trip, may your journey go well!」」」」

Seems they’ve been trained. But having rows of muscular kemomimi meathead Middle-Aged Men lined up to see me off is just annoying and nothing else?

Well, they say that beastman women are afraid of humans, and that I can understand perfectly well, but I came all the way to the Beastmen Country, and it’s Middle-Aged Men all around until the very end! I’m so done with this world! And what’s worse, the Geeks, back in the villages we saved before, got greeted by kemomimi girls! This is a personal discrimination against me, the Highschool boy, alone!

Yes, the real problem is level discrimination. Beastmen are getting discriminated against, yet they’re still discrimination advocates themselves, absolute level supremacists who flip their attitude based on stats.

In other words, I’m unpopular because of my low level! Being low-level and with low Affection Rating, I don’t get to touch tails or ears. I came to another world and have been tormented by levels this whole time, but I never imagined such a vicious trap was lying in wait. Unless I raise my level, I’ll never get to fluff tails or ears. But even if I wiped out every monster and Middle-Aged Man in this world, I’d probably never hit level 100. Truly, mobs get no affection, no events, no flags. Isekai life sure is harsh.

「Haruka-kun, thanks for stuff. Take care!」

「We’ll secure a retreat route from the great wall.」

「The beastmen in the villages said they’ll cooperate too, so we should be able to finish things up too?」

「「「All that’s left is… catapults!」」」

「No, you guys have never managed to build anything properly, okay? At this point, this is like some supernatural anomaly way beyond job-class restrictions? Like, please, don’t touch anything. For some reason, I can’t get rid of the feeling that if you guys make a catapult, the fortresses would either float up into the sky or turn into a giant golem! I stayed up all night making this great wall fortresses, if they fly away or walk off, there’ll be nothing left to defend! Don’t build anything! Don’t do anything! Just geek around like geeks are supposed to! Just stay geeking!」

So yeah, after going around with the pamphlet blueprints and pitching it to every village, all the villages signed long-term contracts with payments in their local specialties, and the talks advanced in a flash, and the Great Wall encircling the Beastmen Country was complete. A fortress combined with a deep, wide system of rivers and canals. I pushed myself so hard that I ran out of MP, and when I got back, the Dungeon Emperor-san’s band of Chinese Girls ravaged me all over. Even worse, in the morning I didn’t even have the strength to take revenge, and suffered another defeat. Utter humiliation! I mean, at this point, long China dresses actually felt kind of fresh!

All that’s left is to properly arm the Middle-Aged Men here and have them garrison the place and it’d be perfect. I even built the interior so they can live properly. For a while, the Geeks will be around, and they’ll scout local problems while the Idiots train up the Middle-Aged Men. My role is limited to a background character making stuff, with maybe a chance to say 『I knew this might happen』later.

「Light the beacons or whatever and we’ll come running right away, just send word!」

「Hey, why don’t you lure them all the way here instead? We’ll be waiting.」

「Like, we followed you all the way here and now we are just sitting and waiting?」

「No, you guys should be worrying about yourselves instead of others. Go practice your ballroom dancing. Your girlfriends are still grinding levels in those Dungeons on the frontier, you know… meaning that the destructive power of their ballroom dance is currently in the middle of being powered up. If you don’t get serious about your ballroom dancing technique, you’re going to eat a close-range combo of knee strikes and stomping in rapid succession. Rest in pieces~?」

「「「「…Hooly! If they just come with raw power, there’s no way to dodge that!」」」」

「If you really want to dance with your girlfriends, then practice properly. With just you dumbasses together… sounds kinda gay, huh?」

「Wait, Haruka! At least teach me that half-step retreat footwork!」 「No, teach me that body technique that nullifies knees by shifting up and down…」 「Teach us that spin-turn step where you retreat while escaping!」

「If you practice dancing properly, you’ll naturally be able to do it. Or if you don’t, you can be like me, spend the entire night constantly under threat of death, not allowed even a fraction of a mistake, so the ballroom dance will naturally end up etched into your body, memory, and soul. Try experiencing Dancing Girl-san’s ultra-close combat ballroom battles once, you’ll get it in one try? The skill or your death, DEAD or ALIVE?.」

They’re shaking their heads with pale faces. For them to instantly grasp the terror of it, they must have pretty good danger-sense. Normally, if a high school boy were told he’d be dancing with a stunning beauty, he’d follow along without hesitation. But thanks to risking their lives in those death dances with their macho girlfriends, they truly understood the fear. …Taikyokuken is what I’d recommend. Perception Qi is pretty good for self-defense?

And then the horsie begins its run. With our short stay now over, the Beastmen Country’s castle quickly shrinks on the horizon, until finally vanishing in the distance. Gradually, the only thing I hear becomes the roar of the wind, and the forest scenery blurs into green walls on both sides. Horse-san is really fast and adorable. It glides across the wilderness so smoothly it feels like we’re soaring through the air.

Since the roaring wind was too loud, I used the magic 『Vibration』to cancel external noise and wrapped the carriage in 『Holding』 Yep, much quieter now.

「H-H-H-Haruka-kun! Wait, what is this!? Isn’t this way too fast, like unnaturally!?」

「Yeah, horsie is working really hard. Such a cute, hardworking, good horse, right? Adorable, isn’t it?」

(Well, Sleipnir was originally known as 『the one who glides』 a divine beast…) (But it’s still just a horse, right?) (((No, from the first glance it was already a monster! It got tiered up!))) (It’s pointless saying that. Even the horse likes it this way.) (That horse supposedly could run faster than any horse in existence, able to fly through all the worlds, carrying the great god Odin wherever he wished. And since it’s the child of Loki, the god of trickery and cunning, anything goes.) (It’s too late now… The divine beast Sleipnir has already been bound under the name 『Horsie』and that caused it to ascend.) (((We found the culprit!)))

The girls all seem to be praising the horse’s magnificence as well. Cute is justice, after all.

「So then, Haruka-sama, we’ve prepared the formal letter for your role as envoy, but… how do you intend to actually enter the country?」

「The Royal Girl’s role is only for emergencies, where she’ll go, 『Know you who this person is? I also have no idea! Anyway, can you not see this letter right in your face?』, until then, we’re traveling incognito? Sneaking in?」

「「「We get the reference, but everything about it is wrong!」」」[TL Note: It’s Abarenbo Shogun, mostly, a common trope of a high ranking official travelling incognito and when things get hairy one of the retainers would reveal their identity, quite often to absolutely no effect since “there is no way shogun would be in such a place” so evildoers would still get beaten up.]

Yeah, I’m looking forward to the bath scene. I’ve got the multi-warhead windmill launcher equipped and ready too, and Snake-san and Chicken-san must also be eager for their turn. Who’ll end up being the clumsy one, I wonder? The chubby one…

「Wait, no, I didn’t say anything! I just meant you’re loaded with gluttonous character vibes, not scatterbrained or pudgy, gahhhhhh! Hey, there’s a little raccoon beastman stowing away from the Beastmen Country! Stop biting, that hurts! Somebody return this beastman already, (*chomp-chomp-chomp*) gwaaaahhhhhh!」

I never got a moment to relax, to sightsee, to bond, to fluff, or to get cozy, the whole goodwill visit was just one frantic rush. But there’s no time now; maybe I’ll get to play tourist on the way back? Still, leaving the Frontier unattended is the biggest danger… Is this why it’s always high schoolers who get summoned to other worlds?

Children believe in eternity, they dream straight toward the future without doubt. But when you become an adult, you learn about what lies beyond your reach, you feel the reality of death that will eventually come. That’s when people stop looking at the future as their own concern, they stop dreaming. High school is the cutoff, maybe?

Once you stop dreaming, you stop thinking about the future after your own death. If it brings you neither harm nor gain, you cut it away as irrelevant. That’s why people avert their eyes from the certain death awaiting the Frontier, and claw after nothing but the happiness of the moment. Everywhere is the same miserable world, it’s not a destination fit for the dream-filled field trip of a high school student.

「If we take this road, we’ll hit the Theocracy’s fortress, so if you want to sneak in, shouldn’t we detour? A carriage can’t get through, so if you want to hide it perhaps it would be better to enter the forest?」

「No, we’ll slip right through. Wouldn’t Horsie be too pitiful if we left it all by itself? It’s such a good horsie, cute and hardworking, too! And with Slime-san riding on its head, the cuteness multiplies! The cuteness has gone beyond Justice, straight into the realm of Truth itself!」

「Wait, you mean you slapped a stealth function onto the carriage!? Didn’t you say even isekai magic couldn’t do that? You actually did that?」

「There are all kinds of stealth, you know. Perception blocking, optical camouflage, presence concealment, plain old sneaking. But if you use magic or skills you’ll just get picked up by mana detection, and then there’s Beastmen with smell detection, Elf Girl’s emotion detection, you name it. So all I meant is that perfect stealth is impossible? Yeah, totally impossible.」

Magic and skills, when they work, are absolute and overwhelming. But if they don’t work, they mean nothing at all. In a world where even magic and physics can be nullified, and nullification itself can be nullified, there’s no such thing as 『Perfect』..

「We’re going at insane speed, are you seriously going to fly over it!? In a carriage!? Let me at least warn everyone so they can brace for landing, or crashing!」

「Good grief, how utterly absurd. It’s a carriage, it doesn’t fly. If it flew, it’d be a plane. High schoolers flying around is a disciplinary committee issue. Not that I know who’s even on the committee, but last I saw it, instead of cracking down on the inn’s mini China dress girls she was cosplaying as a miniskirt cop herself. Anyway, functionally speaking, as long as it’s pulled by a horse, it’s a carriage, you know? Like, common sense-wise?」

It’s often said that boys’ and girls’ brains follow totally different pathways to perception, that logic can flip completely between subjectivity and objectivity. One consequence, apparently, is that girls are worse at telling machines apart. But to not even know the difference between a carriage and a plane? Lamentable. If you gather and integrate the objective information logically, the conclusion is simple: if a horse is pulling it, then it’s a carriage.

And then in the distance comes into view the fortress, or rather, a dome-shaped checkpoint carved out of solid rock. Beyond it lies the Theocracy. Or wait… the Theocracy? This is the Theocracy?

「「「「WHAT the hell are you thinking!?」」」」

「Eh!? What, what!?」

The girls piled onto the driver’s seat. All of them had already transformed into sexy sisters clad in tight-fitting nun habits, their voluptuous curves outlined in detail. From the deep slits of their skirts peeked legs in fishnet stocking, garters proudly on display in the glorious domain of Absolute Territory. And now the whole driver’s box is occupied. Yeah, it’s cramped!

「Don’t 『EH』me!! What did you just do! Why is the fortress collapsing behind us with a wall of dust rising into the skies!?」

「Maybe it’s just me, but did we just go straight through it? Not the gate, but the whole fortress itself?」

「I’ve got a lot of questions, but first of all, what happened to the sneaking!?」

「No, see, since Horsie is working so hard, if we don’t do something silly like slowing down in a bad attempt at stealth and just slip past quickly, it’ll be so fast no one would even see us? Yup, zero witnesses?」

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of sneaking, the slow and steady stealth that never lets you be seen, and the swift, rapid dash that gets you through before you’re spotted. This was the latter. Yup, it was swift.

「Sure, the fortress exploded before they could notice, it all happened too quickly for anyone to see, and yeah, whether temporarily or forever, there’s no way they’d have time to make a report. But, what about the infiltration? The infiltration!?」

「This time we’ve got a big group, see. But we also have Horsie, who can move so fast we’re through before they can even spot us. On top of that, instead of the gate, where all the guards’ attention is focused, we plowed straight through the building, so we eliminated the witnesses as a factor. And also trampled, pulverized, and blasted them away, erasing any witnesses that might’ve remained. So it was an infiltration of no witnesses left alive rationality. Yup, this way nobody will ever realize we snuck in. Perfect, right?」

「「「……」」」

「…? Are you hungry? Want some ice cream?」

「「「It’s not our stomachs that are empty, it’s our common sense that got emptied! Also yes, we’ll eat some!」」」

Looks like they’ll eat. Anyway, here is the Theocracy.

No one in the Theocracy has realized. The Theocracy doesn’t know we’re inside the Theocracy. Not a shred of information has been given to the Theocracy. Yup, we are very stealthy?.