In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 16 (Premium)

by Patora Fuyuhara

  “Do you know anything about the white crown?”

  “...Insufficient data for meaningful answer. Memory unavailable.”

  “There’s no point in asking him that. Noir doesn’t remember anything from before meeting me. The memories aren’t exactly deleted or anything, but they’re sealed.”

  If that was the case then they were probably locked or encrypted in the Q-Crystal, which was basically the Gollem’s brain.

  “What do you want with the white crown anyway?”

  “I told you already. The boundary that defends this world from external invasion is all shredded up. I think the white crown has a power that could repair it.” I also had a feeling that the boundary of Norn’s world was in danger, too.

  “Those Phrase things, right? Those other-worlders?”

  “Yeah... Sort of. The regular Phrase are actually okay now. I made peace with their leadership... But a group of them splintered off and mutated into a dangerous faction. Even your world’s in danger now. They’ve been causing a lot of trouble over there.” I reached out to grab my drink, and it began shaking. The whole table suddenly began rattling and rumbling.

  “...An earthquake?”

  “Looks that way.” It was about a magnitude three quake... Pretty uncomfortable, but nothing terrible. It continued for a short while before stopping.

  Nothing in the restaurant was damaged, so none of the patrons seemed all that bothered about it. I wondered how earthquakes actually happened in the world I’d found myself in.

  It could’ve been the result of tectonic plate shifts, like back on Earth... Or perhaps it had something to do with the Pillar Spirit of Earth. Maybe earthquakes happened when she sneezed or something... It’d be pretty sucky if she ended up having hayfever.

  “There’ve been a lot of earthquakes lately. Is this another effect of the otherworldly invasion?”

  “Wait, there’ve been a lot of earthquakes? When?”

  “...Aren’t you supposed to be the ruler of this nation? How can you be this out of the loop?”

  Oof... It’s not my fault I’ve been spending so much time up in Babylon and in the Reverse World!

  “I’ve even been feeling quakes within the dungeons, you know... It gets a little scary when the walls around you begin shaking.”

  Wait... at the dungeon too? Those things might be accessible from Brunhild but they’re in the south of where Sandora used to be... That’d mean they’re happening globally.

  Is this maybe something to do with our worlds merging?

  ...But I told the spirits not to have any elements freak out or anything, hmm...

  The fact that the dungeons were affected was pretty bad, I didn’t want them collapsing. If it got any worse I’d have to consider restricting the [Gate] portals that led there.

  That reminded me.

  “...What’s this?”

  “Nothing major.”

  I’d opened up [Storage] and took out a little pendant. It had a small blue gem embedded in it.

  Let’s see here... [Teleport], [Program], and [Gate]... That should do it.

  “Alright, here.”

  “Hm?”

  “If you find yourself in danger out in the dungeon, pour some magic into this thing. It’ll bring you back to the castle immediately. You can also bring anyone within a three-meter range. It’s basically an emergency option.”

  “Hmm...”

  She took the pendant from me and looked it over uneasily. I wondered if she didn’t like it or something.

  “...Are you sure you aren’t into little girls?”

  “Prffff?!”

  I spat out the water I’d been drinking. I had no idea what this brat was trying to say.

  “What the hell are you saying?!”

  “I mean... You just randomly gave me such a pretty present, didn’t you? I’ve heard rumors that the leader of this country is a womanizer, after all.”

  “That’s slander!”

  Who the hell’s spreading rumors like that?! Bring them to me!

  “Don’t you have a ton of fiancees, though? Don’t you take different girls out all the time? You have maids, a little girl in a white coat... and even this girl with thick glasses... Actually, the last one is probably my sister.”

  “Ghh... That’s technically true, but it’s not like that.”

  Even putting aside Yumina and the others, I don’t like that people think Cesca, Babylon, and Elluka have that kind of relationship with me... Especially not Doctor Babylon!

  “You just can’t stop yourself, hm? Seems like you don’t care how young your targets are...”

  “I just said that’s not how it is. Quit it already. A lot of the people I walk around with are just my staff. It’s business.”

  There’s no way I’d be interested in seducing anyone with the body of a six-year-old!

  “Suggestion: Report to relevant authorities.”

  “No!” I glared at the little Gollem, and then explained to them exactly what my relationship with Babylon and the gynoids was. I got them to understand that, at least, but they pointed out that by the time I had nine fiancees it was too late for me to avoid the label of womanizer. They weren’t wrong, sadly...

  A while later, I heard that Micah from the Silver Moon had seen me hand over the present to Norn... Gossip about me giving jewelry to a little girl then spread through the town until it even reached Elluka.

  She came up from behind me and smiled, but it was the scary kind of empty smile... Then she said “Let’s have a little chat about my sister, Touya...” and a chill ran down my spine.

  It’s a misunderstanding! Please!

  Interlude: The Mysterious Sushi Adventure

  I held the chopsticks firmly as I placed the morsel into my mouth. There was some faint trace of oil along the fish, and it spread across my mouth slowly. The flavors blended together into a delightful waltz. When I bit into it, the taste of the oil came out even more. Vinegared rice, a bit of salt... some plum. It was like a dream.

  “H-How is it?”

  “It’s delicious! I really like it. It’s not all that different from the sushi I’m familiar with.”

  “R-Really? Thank goodness!” Lu, who had been staring at me anxiously, suddenly melted into relief.

  I threw another bite of yellowtail sushi into my mouth. It was seriously yummy. Technically it wasn’t yellowtail, but Eashen’s closest equivalent fish. I didn’t really care all that much though.

  “Mm! This is delicious, this is! Lu-dono, I would like some more, I would!”

  “Yummy... This is very yummy... I want some more please...”

  Yae and Sakura were seated next to me, happily gulping down the food. They certainly didn’t have any objections.

  All the other girls seemed to be enjoying it too, but they weren’t quite as energetic about it. Elze and Linze seemed pretty into it, though.

  Nobles weren’t accustomed to eating raw fish, so Yumina, Sue, and Hilde weren’t exactly familiar with how to eat sushi. They seemed to do fine with kappa rolls and tamago rolls, though.

  Lu was originally no good at making this kind of stuff either, but she gradually adjusted and ended up making quite a few nice things. Leen and Sakura did just fine, since Mismede and Xenoahs had a fairly diverse level of food in their culture. In Xenoahs it wasn’t even too strange to eat magic beasts.

  Elze and Linze were from Refreese, so they weren’t too unfamiliar with seafood. It was still a little bit uncommon for them, though.

  We had a lot of different kinds of sushi on offer. There was yellowtail, egg, squid, octopus, shrimp, mackerel, flounder, sea bream, bonito, salmon, crab, and scallop. Then we had kappa rolls, veggie rolls, plum rolls, tamago rolls, and some dried gourd. The gourd was pretty hard to come by.

  These things all looked the same as they did in my world, but the ingredients were still a little different. It took a lot of trial and error, and a lot of awkward taste testing, for me to get it right. I remembered being especially worried abo
ut trying out Tentacular as a squid substitute... But luckily regular squid existed in this world too.

  I also used [Search] and wound up discovering that wasabi was around in Eashen. It just wasn’t commonplace since it was only made in one city. Personally, I felt like sushi without wasabi was no sushi at all.

  “I’ve been using fish we found on the dungeon islands. Please enjoy, I want to keep making more and more...” Lu smiled at us while Leen poked at her flounder.

  “This is lovely. The rice really does complement the fish. I think we could even enjoy this with other ingredients.”

  “Mhm! I’ve seen sushi with ham and onions, shrimp tempura, and even roast beef. I’ve had it a few times with conveyor belt sushi.”

  “Conveyor? How can a piece of food convey something to you? I don’t get it?” Sue started staring intently at a piece of egg, perhaps wondering if it was going to communicate with her.

  “No, uh... I meant like a conveyor belt that has plates of sushi on it... I guess it’ll be faster just to show you.”

  I pulled up a video of conveyor belt sushi and showed it to everyone. It was a clip from a variety show, so a couple of comedian commentators talked over it a bit. The conveyor belt ran through the store, with different plates of sushi running down it. All the girls seemed pretty intrigued by it.

  “That looks amazing! Can you take anything you want?”

  “Sometimes, but usually they’re orders for other tables.”

  Sue was staring at the screen with hungry eyes. I wasn’t surprised, she was probably thinking of eating them all.

  “Oooh! Pudding! There’s pudding, too!”

  “Cake...! Cake...?!”

  “Oh, a parfait! It certainly seems to be full of treats.”

  Sue got excited at the sight of pudding, and Sakura had an uncharacteristic burst of excitement at the sight of the cake. Linze seemed pretty happy with what she was seeing in general. There were also sides like fried potatoes, too. Linze was right, the belt was full of treats. I was pretty fond of the sides you could get in restaurants like that.

  “Can’t you make something like this, Doctor?”

  “Mfh?”

  When Elze brought up the idea of Doctor Babylon getting involved in sushi operations, Lu quickly stuffed her cheeks full of rice. She looked like a squirrel. It was kind of funny.

  “The mechanism is pretty simple, honestly. If you just want the belt rotating at a constant speed, then Touya or Leen would be able to do it with [Program].”

  Doctor Babylon was right in that the basics were pretty simple, but I had a feeling that touch-screen ordering would be a little more complex.

  I tossed some sea bream sushi into my mouth. It was really tasty. It had been a while since I’d had good sushi, but there was still something missing.

  “I miss tuna...”

  Tuna... Oh, tuna... Pacific bluefin tuna, to be precise... The king of all fish, the magnificent tuna... It existed in this world, sure, just not in the waters around the dungeon islands.

  When I searched it up, it was offshore around Eashen. But that area was largely unexplored... Even though I had a result, my [Search] spell was unreliable sometimes, so it was more likely to be a fish that was just close enough to tuna.

  Also, the tuna was unusually large. As far as I knew, the largest tuna on Earth was four meters long, but the tuna I looked up in this world seemed to be around ten meters long.

  I wondered if it was a monster of some sort... A magic beast, perhaps? Or a magic fish... It wasn’t that I couldn’t go fishing or anything, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of free time...

  “Touya! Do you think we could serve sushi at the next League of Nations meeting? I’d like them to try this conveyor belt sushi you showed us!”

  “Hmm? At the League of Nations?”

  While I daydreamed of tuna, Lu turned to me and spoke up.

  “That sounds wonderful, it does! I would like Shirahime-sama to try it, I would! I would be very happy if this kind of food spread to Eashen!” Yae was referring to the mikado of Eashen, Shirahime. I wondered if the world leaders would be so eager to try raw fish, though... The king of Egret would probably be fine with it, given that they already had it as part of their diet.

  If sushi spread to Eashen, then the demand for wasabi would probably go up too... Still, I wondered if the world had enough rice in it for it to become a global fad. There was still a possibility it could catch on, even so...

  “Alright, I’ll get to work on a sushi conveyor belt! I’ll make one even better than the video you showed me, Touya!”

  “Make sure you don’t do anything weird... I don’t wanna see any self-destruct buttons or anything.”

  The doctor flashed a mischievous grin as she shoveled more sushi into her mouth. Still, part of me really wanted that tuna. I internally debated going fishing for it before the League of Nations meeting. Mostly, I just wanted to eat it for my own sake.

  ◇　◇　◇

  “Is that tuna?!”

  “...N-No, it’s a little different from the tuna I know.”

  The massive fish jumped out from the water, and Linze asked me for confirmation. I couldn’t give her a sound answer. I didn’t quite know what I was looking at.

  It was sort of like a tuna? I didn’t think tuna on Earth had horns, though. And their pectoral fins were definitely not so huge... It was kind of moving like a flying fish.

  However, I’d never heard of a flying tuna fish. How was it even floating with such a massive body, anyway? I wondered if it was using magic. Linze’s Helmwige floated magnificently, but the tuna-like fish was running rampant and proving difficult to handle. I was standing outside on the shoulder.

  We didn’t want to damage the tuna’s body too badly. Ideally, we didn’t want to damage its body at all. But it was jumping at such a high speed that it was hard to aim for... If we missed our attacks, we could damage other fish in the area, too.

  I brought along Sango and Kokuyou since it was an aquatic encounter, but this was more troubling than I’d thought.

  “How ssshall we deal with thisss?”

  “What do you two suggest?”

  “We could use the full extent of our power in the water, and obliterate the fish in a matter of seconds.”

  “No thanks.”

  That would defeat the whole point. We weren’t here to destroy the fish, we were here to catch and eat it.

  “Touya, we could try slowing it down?”

  I heard Linze’s suggestion through the speaker and nodded slowly. That seemed wise to me. I decided to start off with that.

  ““Come forth, Water! Raging Whirlpool: [Maelstrom]!”

  A massive whirlpool formed in front of the tuna. Alright, now it’s slowed, I can just encase it in ice... Wait, what?!

  The tuna simply swam straight through the whirlpool without a care in the world. I’d clearly underestimated that fish. The fish quickly submerged itself in the water, which proved to be an issue.

  Even if my smartphone could track it with the searching function, if it went too deep it’d all be over. It wasn’t that I couldn’t follow after it, I could easily use the Black Monarch’s power to breathe down there, but I didn’t want it to turn into an all-out fight... If it was a case of slaughtering the fish, that’d be fine. But I couldn’t really use my strength here or I’d damage valuable food.

  It was huge, though. We could definitely afford to damage the areas that wouldn’t be needed for food.

  “Guess we’re gonna have to go fishing the classic way.”

  There was nothing else for it. We’d used a massive fishing line to pull up the Tentaculars a while ago, and that was still in my [Storage]. I could easily make a hook with [Modeling], which meant all I needed was bait...

  The fish we were after was huge. Regular bait wasn’t going to cut it. I needed some bonito-sized fish. I turned to Kokuyou and Sango and held out my hands out to the approximate width I was after.

  “Alright, guys. I need y
ou to catch fish that are about this big. Please don’t rip them apart.”

  “Very well.”

  “Ssseemsss sssimple.”

  They both jumped off of Helmwige’s wing, returned to their true sizes, and dropped into the water with a sudden splash. After a short while, the duo returned with a lot of bonito-sized fish in their mouths. With that, the bait had been secured.

  “Now I just need to thread this through here, and... Oh, Linze. Transform Helmwige, okay?”

  “Got it!”

  I used [Fly] to clear myself away from Helmwige as it transformed from a jet-like form into its more mech-like base form. Helmwige was unique amongst the other Frame Gears, in that it had superior boosters and an anti-gravity field. It could hover in the air indefinitely.

  Helmwige took the large fishing line, complete with hook and bait, into its massive hands.

  I could’ve called Reginleif to do this myself, but I wasn’t confident I’d be precise or delicate enough with the tuna and the flying at the same time. Linze had a lot more flight experience.

  Helmwige made a few dexterous motions until it finally caught the attention of the tuna. It bit down and started pulling on the line.

  “It took the bait!”

  “Woo!”

  Helmwige started tugging at the fishing line. The line and hook were made out of orichalcum and my [Modeling] spell, so I didn’t expect it to break.

  It was true that the tuna had broken through my [Maelstrom] spell, but Helmwige was still a Frame Gear. Even if it wasn’t combat-oriented, it couldn’t lose against monsters.

  Helmwige continued to reel in the fishing line, and the tuna breached the surface once more. It was struggling, and moving quickly, but it was clearly slowed. This was my chance.

  Without missing a beat, I flew over and immediately cast [Ice Coffin] on the hulking fish. A square block of ice rose from beneath the waves, sealing the tuna within. One fresh tuna, coming right up!

  I activated [Storage], and sucked up the tuna popsicle into it. One would probably be enough to feed everyone, given that it was ten meters long... But I wanted to catch some more, just to be on the safe side. It made sense to do it while we were out there. There were all kinds of dishes I wanted to make with tuna, after all. Tuna bowls... Skewers... This is kind of my own gluttony talking...