Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 2

by Yukika Minamino

  “Indeed.”

  “On the other hand, we are a bit worn out. I think we can wait ’til tomorrow to restart our chase,” Tiamat said.

  I agreed. Since we came upon a town, I certainly wanted to sleep in a bed. A little expectantly, I glanced at Mister Dolitos.

  “In that case, please stay in our town.”

  He returned a generous smile to us.

  9.

  Having safely reunited with Mister Donkey, we were going to spend the night in Wulds. I was a little worried that this small town wouldn’t have an inn, but to my surprise, we were invited to stay in the mayor’s manor. The VIP treatment.

  With food and booze, it was a party. He had even brought out the pretty ladies to serve us. Which was definitely unnecessary. I had a fiancée, and the very lady was sitting next to me. Under the guise of her human shell, she was a dragon. If I dared cheat on her, she could very well eat me raw. Head first. Crunch crunch. Without even any seasonings.

  In any case, the safe bet was to redirect that kind of service to Ruey. I stuck to conversing with Mister Dolitos.

  “I must confess, I don’t know how to act in such an extravagant welcome, Mister Dolitos.”

  “Please, Sir Eiji. You’ve already refused a reward. At least let us do this much, for our sake.”

  That being said, I wasn’t going to rob this not-so-affluent town of any money. Especially when the battle earlier had caused some damage. There were no deaths, but fixing up fences, buildings, and farms could be pricey. No one in his position should be handing off a small fortune to some adventurers who dropped by.

  “I appreciate the offer, but please mind your own time. Winter is fast approaching, and you can’t have enough food stocked.”

  If he gave us too much food, they might struggle to make it through winter. In fact, no rice was served to us. As a town by a forest, I imagined that they hunted for their food a lot. With lots of meat on the table, their main source of food was rye bread. Dry, crumbling rye bread. Like the ones we packed on our travels. When that sort of thing is served, I couldn’t help but think that they didn’t yield much rice that year.

  “Actually, we don’t grow rice in Wulds,” Mister Dolitos smiled, having picked up something from my expression.

  That was surprising. This was our first meeting with non-rice-eaters.

  “I see. Everyone I’ve met on my journey ate rice, so I assumed that was the norm.”

  “We buy rice from traveling merchants when they bring it, but they’re not on a schedule. We stick to these.”

  Tearing off a piece of the rye bread with his teeth, he washed it down with a wine-like liquor. Good thing he had healthy teeth and jaw.

  “Is there a reason why you don’t grow rice? I think it’s a very efficient crop.”

  “We don’t get much water. Our wells are enough for us to get by, but not nearly enough to manage rice fields.”

  “Really?”

  I raised my brow, but also understood. There had been several rivers and springs in the forest we passed through. It must have been my modern mind that gave me the idea of digging a canal from one of those water sources. That would be a major project. Not something they could start at the drop of the hat, and they would need some knowledge of hydrological engineering.

  “So that’s why you grow rye?”

  “Before my time, we used to grow wheat, but rye grows in worse soil, at the end of the day.”

  With a nod, I glanced at Tiamat to request an explanation. I didn’t know the difference between growing rye and wheat.

  “Both rye and wheat are harvested from the same field. Since it was similar to wheat, the rye plants were left untrimmed. Then, the ones most similar to wheat continued to survive. Over dozens of generations, rye evolved to become similar to wheat.”

  And, since rye plants were weeds to begin with, they can apparently grow in soil too weak to grow wheat in. Rye was amazing! Talk about an underdog.

  “Long ago, when the entire world was burned to ash by the Demon Lord, our hero gave us rice. However, when our ancestors were lost, having discovered that our land was unfit for growing rice, they found a grain sprouting in the burnt field. Rye.”

  I hadn’t heard of this tale before. So that was the background for my brother-in-law popularizing rice. He didn’t just bring over Kirara 397 for his personal preference. Now, co-ed bathing was definitely introduced only for his personal interest. He was a teenage boy, after all.

  “Now it makes sense. Your fighters are healthy because you don’t constantly eat rice.”

  With that, I told him of the beriberi epidemic in Azur. Not to scare him, but to basically illustrate that everything should be had in moderation.

  “Mm. Brumotactillophobia is bad for you.”

  Tiamat jumped in for the assist. But what was with the technical language? Mister Dolitos was staring back at us blankly. I tried to rephrase it, but I couldn’t come up with an alternative. This was the fear of one’s food touching another kind of food. Eating one dish at a time at a meal is considered rude in Japan, and it really didn’t improve one’s health either.

  “AKA being an isolationist.”

  “Right. If you knew the layman’s term, I wish you would have opened with it.”

  “But did you know the layman’s term?”

  “Touché.”

  I’d never heard of the non-technical term.

  “In any case, overeating is not healthy. I see,” Mister Dolitos laughed after watching our comedy routine. We are the beloved Hermits. Damn it.

  Wulds was a small town, but they had a jail. Of course they did, I should say. Any settlement needs a facility to keep criminals captive. This world wasn’t so la-la to say that there were no criminals in a small town.

  A shadow approached said jail. It was the dead of night after the sun had completely set. The figure was in all-black, hiding their face with a mask. Noticing the figure, the goblin leader approached the bars of his cell. A rescue, he must have thought.

  Just as he was about to cry in glee, the figure in black stopped him by holding up a single finger of his left hand in front of his face. Catching the drift, the goblin covered his mouth with his hands. The next moment, the figure’s right hand seemed to blur. With the goblin’s hands still where the mouth used to be, his head fell to the floor of the jail cell with a ludicrously light note.

  With a glance at the pitiful goblin, the figure in black turned to leave... and froze, as they locked eyes with me, who had been watching this event unfold. This fly on the wall was found out.

  The figure acted quickly. They sprinted without a word, a charred dagger flashing in their hand. The weapon they just used to kill the goblin. The figure charged me, trying to kill me, too. We were just a few steps apart. I had no way to dodge the attack.

  Still, the attacker’s blade never reached me. After a whish, the figure in black backflipped. More accurately, Tiamat’s tail slammed into their face straight-on, flipping the figure and dropping them on the ground headfirst.

  The nightscape shifted as the rest of my party emerged. Ruey rushed over and tied the figure behind their back after making sure that they hadn’t been killed.

  “Came to tie up loose ends. Rather thorough of them,” Hieronymus chuckled, his mustaches dancing.

  It was a simple trick when it came down to it. We had been concealing ourselves with his spell. Invisibility, he called it. We went through the trouble because the goblin we had captured was too unyielding. He gave up no information and didn’t fold to any of Baze’s threats, despite the fact that, accordingly, monsters usually can’t disobey a creature above them.

  Guessing that the goblin was confident of an incoming rescue, we set out a trap. We thought that the goblin would finally break if his rescue team was captured too. However, the one who appeared wasn’t a rescuer but an assassin. I couldn’t help but move to try and stop the act, which caused the spell on me to break and our eyes to meet. I had no excuse for myself.

  �
��We simply have a dark elf prisoner instead of a goblin one now. This one may be a little more reasonable,” Tiamat said, as if to reconcile my mistake.

  Ruey tore off the assassin’s mask, revealing bright silver hair that flowed in the wind.

  10.

  “Grr! Kill me!”

  The dark elf glared at us as she was bound by Ruey. Her skin was as black as night, contrasting her silver hair. She had onyx irises in her elongated eyes. She was ridiculously beautiful. That being said, I never thought I’d hear that line in real life. Please. That made it sound like we’re the bad guys.

  “Now, now. Don’t get yourself excited.”

  I tried the understanding approach.

  “Don’t touch me! You filthy human!”

  I didn’t touch her, nor did I even try to. What a false accusation. This was her reaction for me taking a step towards her? She was treating me like some sort of virus. What was she, five?

  I wasn’t too immature as to become enraged at that poor excuse of an insult, but I had to acknowledge the difficulty level of our negotiations to come. She had no intention of hearing out anything we had to say. That being said, if I went and said something like ‘I have no tongue to speak to you with!’ there would be no negotiations to speak of.

  “I have no intention of torturing a prisoner of mine, but I don’t appreciate the insults. We may be standing on opposite sides of the matter, but I don’t think any civilized person would insult their opponent for that. What do you think?”

  “Wha...?!”

  The dark elf flapped her mouth after I said this to her face. Hm. Susceptible to common sense, it seemed. Then there was room for discourse. There are people in this world that counter logic with rage. You can’t negotiate rationally with those people, but only appeal to their emotions. We were fortunate that this dark elf was not one of them.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Eiji.”

  “...Cielz,” the prisoner answered after enough time passed for light to travel three million kilometers.

  She must have had quite the internal conflict. I didn’t mock her in any way, of course. I only wore a gentle smile and made a suggestion.

  “Let’s talk somewhere else. No one can feel comfortable talking next to a dead body.”

  Inside the manor, it was as silent as... well, that wasn’t a good start to the simile. In the hall where the party was hosted, a bunch of drunks were snoring in a dog pile. A horrendous display of naivety.

  “Where are you headed, Sir Eiji?”

  Mister Dolitos, who was still awake, approached us. Good. With a brief summary of the event, I explained that we were going to ask our prisoner some questions, and asked him to take care of our ex-prisoner’s body. Everyone would surely be surprised to find a dead goblin there in the morning.

  “Understood. I’ll tend to it immediately.”

  Mister Dolitos agreed, albeit surprised. He kicked one of the town’s watchmen to wake him up. Kick. Kick. What a hostile work environment. Chuckling, we entered the room provided to us. To be accurate, it was Tiamat and I’s room.

  Come to think of it, I had spent most of my time in this world sharing a room with her. I mean, there was nothing wrong with an engaged couple sharing a room, but perhaps there was something wrong about us not having acted like it at all. I was over two months into celibate life. Since this hadn’t really bothered me, I must have been more beta than I thought.

  “Now, we actually only have one question for you, Miss Cielz,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

  Miss Cielz still had her hands tied behind her back. Even though my wild friends had my back, I couldn’t very well untie her in this situation. The dark elf stared back from her seat.

  “You have a leader, don’t you? We would like to meet them. Will you tell us where they are?”

  I went straight to the point. In truth, we weren’t sure that there was such a being as a Demon Lord. However, it just wasn’t feasible for stray monsters to act that organized. To split up their army and execute a coordinated retreat? No one without experience in war would have come up with that, to be honest.

  And it probably wasn’t a coincidence that the goblins attacked the town either. It must have been one of their strategies to slow down the trailing army, with even someone to keep an eye on the battle to keep it somewhat under control. I shuddered, realizing how thorough they were.

  “...And then what, human?”

  Miss Cielz answered with a question after another long pause. A natural question.

  “I wanted to speak with them.”

  “About?”

  “Things that have happened. Things that will happen,” I said, in a slightly showboaty way.

  The dark elf wore a thin scowl.

  “Humans and the Dark Side speaking of the future? Ludicrous.”

  A full-blown mocking tone. Perhaps the divide between us was wider than I’d thought.

  “So much so?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how humans have treated us.”

  She glared at me. Hmm. I never knew that to begin with.

  “My apologies. I am a Hermit, and don’t know much about the turmoil of this world.”

  I intentionally used my title because our conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Until this point, people had usually reacted to the title of Hermit. I was expecting a similar reaction here.

  “Hermit?! You accursed Hermits!”

  Miss Cielz’s reaction, however, was the opposite of what I had expected. She stomped the ground, widened her eyes, and enraged like she was going to bite me. In fact, if Ruey hadn’t kept her restrained, she would have definitely attacked me. And literally bit me, since her hands were tied.

  “You Hermits! Who decimated us nearly to extinction a hundred and fifty years ago?! What could you possibly have to say now?!”

  Oh. I got it now. The Demon Lord was vanquished by Shizuru, the hero. When he did, he could not have just gotten rid of the Demon Lord, isolated. The Demon Lord’s henchmen/women must have been destroyed too, or at least nearly destroyed. Guessing from the context clues I had so far, Miss Cielz and the other dark elves were on the Demon Lord’s side. Of course she was holding a grudge. And the hero was a Hermit too.

  Oops. I really messed up, bad. I should have known that not everyone would be welcoming of Hermits with open arms. That was a no brainer, and it still slipped my mind. Those Isekai fantasies are the only worlds in which affirmation is given unconditionally. I had made a similar mistake in the past with Tiamat too. I hadn’t learned anything from my mistake. I was pathetic.

  “Hm. That may be true, but who are the dark elves to play the victim? Nearly to extinction? Who massacred all of the elves in this world, again?”

  Tiamat came in with this sarcastic question. She had come to my rescue after I had fallen silent. I shot my trusty partner a quick glance. She gave me a little nod.

  “...”

  Miss Cielz had no response.

  “I’m not blaming you for it. Both sides are at fault. I only mentioned it to prove the stupidity of war.”

  Still in her dragon form, she managed to shrug. In an attempt to destroy the world, the Demon Lord had made many species extinct. Erased many nations from the world map. Then, a Hermit appeared. Shizuru, the hero, stood in the way of the Demon Lord’s army in order to save humanity.

  By the time the human army he led had vanquished the Demon Lord, both the Demon Lord’s army and the human army had suffered much. Most of the world had turned to ash. In the century and a half since then, humans managed to regain this much prosperity.

  That’s what Tiamat explained to me, and gave me a look that said ‘I bought you time, now wrap up the negotiation.’ Got it. I didn’t fumble that ball with writing on it.

  “Miss Cielz... We don’t want to recreate the war of old. I want to speak with your leader in order to prevent such an event from happening again.”

  I stared directly into her pitch-black eyes. I was going to make it or
break it.

  The Demon Lord’s a Highschooler!

  1.

  “I apologize if I’ve offended you,” I said to Miss Cielz.

  Even if what Tiamat had said was logical, it was also true that I had spoken carelessly. Being stubborn and refusing to apologize wouldn’t do me any good here.

  “At this point, I still think there is time to resolve things with discourse. Matters haven’t expanded beyond Noura yet.”

  As time would go on, casualties would grow. Along with that, the room for negotiation or reaching an understanding would rapidly shrink. Then it would be too late. All that would be left is a brawl to the death between humans and monsters. And this time, there would be no hero to save humanity. I didn’t know how the god on-site planned to resolve the matter, but I doubted that it would summon yet another hero.

  “...”

  Miss Cielz stared back at me with skepticism. She seemed unsure of what I meant. To her, Hermits were enemies. It was natural for her to struggle to understand when a Hermit sounded like he was willing to negotiate.

  “Or would you still prefer an encore of what happened a hundred and fifty years ago? This time, both sides may be wiped out.”

  I felt like I was drilling in the same point a little too hard, but I had no other cards to play. I couldn’t demand a surrender with the threat of a powerful military nor oppress them with overwhelming financial control. As an average joe with no cheat codes to speak of, all I could do was speak to her sense of reason with sincerity.

  “...I don’t.”

  “You don’t. I don’t either. Because of that, I believe that we have at least one chance for a conversation.”

  “You want an audience with our ruler?”

  “I do.”

  “But I’m just a bottom-rank soldier.”

  The dark elf smirked. Combined with her black skin and black eyes, her expression looked extremely sinister. However, even my dull brain could pick up that both her claim and her attitude were an act. I couldn’t believe that a private would have the authority to kill the leader of one of their battalions.