Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Volume 6

by Funa

When it came to matters that only the nanomachines would know about, Mile strictly restrained herself from relying too much on their information, just as in her jobs with the Crimson Vow. However, she had also allowed herself an exception to that rule; namely, in cases where someone’s life was in danger or when it would not trouble or have an ill effect on other people and was merely for her own amusement rather than personal gain. In these cases, it was okay to work alongside the nanomachines now and then.

  Plus, she had realized that if she went too long without calling on them, they would grow peevish and begin inventing reasons to make conversation.

  ***

  “It’s no use…”

  No matter how many different places she tried, the results were the same. Each time, she would set the fairy-shaped golem flying about on its string while she hid beneath the trees, the spool that the thread was attached to in her hand. She would then move to a different place and repeat the same experiment.

  From the moment that Mile first learned that fairies existed in this world, it had become her life’s goal to meet one.

  Apparently, in the past it had been relatively commonplace to encounter a fairy, and as a result, various tales still lingered in the cultural recollection—stories of lost little children to whom the fairies gave honey and snacks before guiding them back to the outskirts of their village or of fairies who offered troubled villagers the solutions to their problems…

  However, it seemed that those who would capture and sell the fairies, or try to imprison them and put on display, had begun to appear more and more frequently. As a result, the fairies gradually stopped appearing in front of humans altogether. Yet it did not appear that they had all been annihilated in one fell swoop by some calamity—merely that they had stopped showing themselves to humans, from which it followed that there still must be some possible way to draw them out. Perhaps by a method like the one Mile was currently trying…

  Just as the sun was beginning to set and Mile started to consider packing up and going home, a single fairy appeared.

  “My, my! What’s wrong, dearest? You’re covered in blood! Oh, how dreadful! Your lovely wings… Has some human done this to you? Come, let’s get you back to the secret nest…”

  It was as if she had come out of nowhere.

  The fairy called out to the fairy-shaped golem, her wings fluttering as she approached the unsteady thing and put her arms around it in concern, trying to support its weight. Just then…

  Grab!

  “Eeek!!”

  The fairy let out a cry of shock as the golem suddenly clamped both its arms and legs around her.

  “Wh—?! Let me go! We’re both going to fall! You’re safe now! Please calm down!”

  Apparently, she still thought that the other creature was an injured fellow fairy.

  The golem’s back then opened with a snap, and four more arms extended from the opening, latching tight onto the fairy’s limbs. With this, the fairy finally realized that this was not in fact one of her kin but some kind of unfamiliar spectre, which had merely taken on the form of one of her fellow fae. She went pale, and her mouth opened wide.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!”

  Mile then began to reel in her spool, drawing both golem and fairy toward her.

  She knew about lure fishing from her previous life, and so, based on those same principles, she had decided to create a fairy-shaped lure. She would use a golem masquerading as an injured fairy to draw a concerned fairy in and capture them.

  It was brutish. There was no doubt that this would push the standing of humans even lower in the eyes of all fairies.

  “S-someone help! Don’t eat meeeee!!!”

  Given its many limbs, and the fact that it moved as though drawn in by a string, the fairy seemed to assume that this was some sort of spider-like monster mimicking a fairy. Any creature that would go to the trouble of mimicking its prey could have one of only two goals:

  1) Eating it.

  2) Using venom to paralyze it and using its body to spawn its eggs.

  There were no other plausible explanations. Seeing how the creature was drawing her in alive, showing no signs of wanting to kill her, despite a successful capture, the fairy could not imagine her fate as anything but number two—a fate more deplorable than death. And so she once again began to scream at the top of her lungs.

  “Geeeeeeeeee!!!! SOMEONE HELP MEEE! ANYOOOOOOOONNNNNEE!!!”

  As the fairy drew nearer, half-maddened in fear, Mile called out to try to calm her.

  “There’s no need to worry. I’m not a monster, I’m a human. So, there’s no need for you to…”

  Halfway through Mile’s speech, the fairy suddenly stopped screaming.

  “A human?”

  “Yes, I’m a human!”

  “GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

  After a scream even more desperate than her first, the fairy suddenly went quiet. Thinking this curious, Mile peeked down at her to see that she was foaming at the mouth, her eyes blank. Apparently, as far as the fairy was concerned, compared to having eggs implanted in her by an arachnid monster and being eaten alive by its newly hatched young, capture at the hands of a human was a far more gruesome fate.

  Just how afraid of humans are fairies?!?! Mile wondered.

  Enough that they never showed themselves in front of humans, at the very least.

  ***

  “Oh! It was j-just a dream…”

  Millelina, the fairy girl, awoke with a start, patting her chest.

  “Oh, what a terrible dream that was… I thought that I’d been captured by some monster pretending to be a fairy, when it actually turned out to be a human! What a nightmare… Honestly, that’s enough of a nightmare for a lifetime…”

  She was drenched in sweat, but now that she realized it was only a dream, a smile appeared on Millelina’s face.

  “I’m ever so sorry to inform you, but unfortunately this is not a dream…”

  Millelina looked up reflexively at the voice to see her entire view obscured by a giant human face.

  “GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

  “Oh, she fainted again…”

  Mile looked troubled.

  “Oh! It was j-just a dream…”

  Millelina, the fairy girl, awoke with a start, patting her chest.

  “Oh, what a terrible dream that was…”

  “I’m ever so sorry to inform you, but unfortunately this is not—”

  “GYBADADAFRASDHAHAAH!”

  “Oh, there she goes again… All right, that’s enough already!!”

  This could only go on for so long. If they kept at it, before Mile knew it, it would be night. So that they could move on to the next step while it was still light out, Mile desperately shook Millelina awake.

  ***

  “…so, that’s what’s going on.”

  “You didn’t capture me just to sell me or put me on display?”

  “Of course not! I really just wanted to talk to you…”

  Millelina was still terrified upon waking, but after Mile rambled on to her about the whole scheme, Millelina finally seemed to calm down a bit.

  “You aren’t going to steal my liver or my shirikodama?”

  “What do you think I am, a kappa?!”

  Apparently, there were a lot of strange rumors being flung about in the fairy world. It was tantamount to slander.

  “In the human world, that’s something that’s said to be done by a type of fairy!”

  Mile was not lying. Such stories were told back in Japan. It was also true that kappas were said to be fallen gods, or else a type of fairy. However, Millelina, upon hearing this, shouted in dismay. “Wh-wh-wh-wha?! What a horrid rumor! That’s slander!!!”

  “I’m the one who should be saying that!!”

  About ten minutes later, the two began speaking to one another again.

  “Anyway, who I’d really like to speak to is a chief or some other elder—whoever would have the clearest recollection of details from the pas
t. So, if you would just take me to your village…”

  “As if I would ever do such a thing! Perhaps you aren’t interested in our livers or our souls, but the fact still remains that human have captured and tried to sell us before!”

  “No, but I’m telling you that… Wait, ‘tried to’? Fairies have never actually been sold?”

  Some decades ago, many wicked merchants and other scoundrels had come around to hunt the fairies. Before that, Mile had been told, humans and fairies had a peaceful coexistence… She had assumed that fairies, who, unlike now, had once trusted humans, had been captured in droves.

  “We were captured, yes, many of us. But for some reason, whenever night fell, the wagons or tents where our captured brothers and sisters were being kept would catch on fire and the captured fairies would vanish. And then, for some reason, when our captors dragged themselves back to town, they would find that their homes and businesses, and the homes and warehouses of the rich and influential people who had placed orders for fairies, had all been burned to the ground. For some reason…

  “It would seem that, soon enough, the humans who would come to capture us stopped appearing at all. For. Some. Reason. Though, well, it is also true that we stopped even showing our faces to humans, anyway…” Millelina finished with a sneer.

  Surely enough, fairies, who were tiny and could fly with nary a sound, would probably make the ultimate spies or terrorists.

  Ah! “You should never look down on perilous pixies”… Hm… “Fairly fatal fabulously flying fairies”…? No, that’s no good. Ugh, I think I’m in a bit of a slump here…

  Mile could not come up with a single decent pun.

  “Even if you torture me, I shall never give up the location of our hidden nes—”

  “I see! So the fairies’ dwelling is hidden by some means, you say? Thank you very much for that information.”

  “Uh…”

  Millelina suddenly went silent, as she realized that she had unintentionally given up some classified intel.

  “Th-that’s… A-anyway, no human would ever be able to see through the magical wall that we’ve all conjured!”

  “Mm-hmm…concealing magic, then? Then your nest would be found somewhere with a hint of magic or where the surrounding scenery doesn’t look quite right…”

  “Wha-wh-wh-wha?!”

  “D-damn!” Millelina’s mouth flapped stupidly. Yet she just kept giving up more and more information. “The forty-seven members of our clan shall never be brought to our knees by anyone!”

  “Oh, go on then… Your population is forty-seven, you say?”

  “Aaaaaaaaaargh!!”

  Realizing how much vital information she had now given away, Millelina crumbled.

  “B-but, we still have a trump card! Miss Wintergale! She’s so splendid in combat, they call her the ‘Battle Fairy’!”

  “Mm-hmm, so there’s one opponent to be cautious of, and, judging by her name, she uses blizzard-type combat magic…”

  “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  Was this level of idiocy common among fairies? Or was this a special characteristic of this individual, Millelina? Even the other fairies would probably think that a girl who was also known as the “Electric Fairy,” would at least be a little bit brighter…

  So Mile thought, but it did not seem that she would be getting any more information out of the girl.

  Still, now that it was beginning to grow dark, finding a hidden village was going to prove difficult. There was only one thing to do now…

  Nanos!

  HERE WE ARE!

  The fairy-shaped golem from before, which had remained unmoving for some time, suddenly began to warp in shape, changing color.

  “Wh…?”

  Millelina was stunned at the sight.

  The golem was now the spitting image of Millelina.

  “How’s the voice sample?”

  “Save me! Save me!” the golem replied, in a voice that sounded exactly like Millelina’s.

  “Ngah! Aaah! Graaaaaaaaah…”

  Ignoring Millelina, who was trembling and red in the face, Mile ordered, “Liftoff!”

  “Rasah!”

  With that, the golem once again took flight, a string attached to its back…

  ***

  “Now, what to do with you all?”

  Night had fallen, and Mile now had forty-seven fairies, bound, incapacitated, and rolling on the ground around her.

  The one called Wintergale had fainted the moment her dear friend’s back popped open and four extra arms came out.

  “Well, I guess there’s no point in me trying to track down the fairies’ ‘hidden nest’ now.”

  It was the catch of a lifetime. She had gotten bite after bite on her cast-out line. Mile was quite pleased with her fishing prowess.

  “Oh, I’d better take off the sound barrier…”

  So that they would not interfere with her fishing, Mile had been keeping all of the captured fairies inside of a sound-dampening field. The fairies were desperately flapping their mouths, but no sound came out. However, when she removed the barrier…

  “What are you going to do to us?!”

  “Release us at once, you fiendish human!”

  “Do whatever you want to me, but please, spare my wife and daughter…”

  “I’m gonna burn ya! I’m gonna burn ya to the ground!!!”

  “Dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

  They were noisy. Incredibly noisy.

  “Come on, guys, I already told you I don’t have any bad intentions. I just wanted to talk a bit, and I thought that we might be able to make friends.”

  “Who the hell are you kidding?!?!?!” came a chorus.

  Seeing how the fairies raged at her, despite her friendly demeanor, Mile was speechless.

  Could you blame them, though? Suddenly capturing and restraining someone was not something that anyone who aimed to be a friend would do…

  A short while later, after Mile promised the fairies that she would let them go as soon as they heard her out, that she would not force them to talk, and that she would tell no one that she had encountered them, the fairies finally began to calm down and grow quiet.

  She decided to withdraw her tent from her inventory and move the fairies inside so that they could have a more leisurely conversation. Even the fairies were a bit stunned to see how casually she produced the item.

  “Might I get you to loosen these bindings a bit?” asked an old man who appeared to be the eldest of the group, most likely the village elder. Of course, Mile could not comply with his request. No matter how small they were, fairies were still quick, and fairly decent at magic.

  Honestly, Mile was not worried for her own safety. She merely worried that if she had to guard herself against a simultaneous attack from all the fairies and recapture them all at once in this dark and cramped tent, she might end up squashing them in an instant.

  When she explained as much, the fairies fell quiet again.

  “Come now. This’ll be over soon! I really just have a few questions to ask you all! So please, try and bear it for just a little while longer,” she said, before silently placing a request with the nanomachines.

  Would you be able to block the fairies’ magic until we’re finished talking?

  IF YOU, LADY MILE, AUTHORIZATION LEVEL 5, SO DIRECT IT, THEN NATURALLY THAT INSTRUCTION SHALL BE PRIORITIZED. DUE TO THE SMALL SIZE OF FAIRIES’ BODIES, THEIR THOUGHT PULSE EMISSIONS ARE WEAK, AND THUS THEY ARE UNABLE TO PRODUCE ANY LARGE-SCALE MAGIC TO BEGIN WITH, BEYOND THEIR FLIGHT CAPABILITIES.

  That much put her at ease. No matter how weak their magic might be, it would be irritating to have the tent set ablaze, and they still might be able to burn through the strings that bound them.

  Then, if you would, please!

  ROGER THAT!

  “Now, I’ll cut to the chase. What I would like to ask you all about is the matter of an ancient civilization, information of which should have been passed down through your vari
ous generations…”

  “Hm?”

  Surprise spread across the face of the fairy Mile presumed to be the village elder.

  “Y-you know about the Land of the Gods…?”

  Behind the elder, other fairies were fussing that they couldn’t produce fire or magic, but the old man ignored them.

  “Yes. So far, I’ve already heard about it from an elf and an elder dragon. So, I know the general facts, but I desperately needed to know if there was any new information I could gather from the stories passed down among the fairies…”

  Hearing this, the elder was stunned even further.

  Indeed, an elf was one thing, but he would have never thought that he would hear of a human who could have such a conversation with elder dragons.

  “I see. In that case, I suppose I can tell you—”

  “Chief!”

  “Chief, no!”

  Countless fairies tried to stop the elder, but he kept them in check.

  “There’s no point in trying to keep it a secret. On the contrary, I believe that this is a tale that the gods and our ancestors wished us to tell. This tale is merely one that has been lost among humans, whose generations turn over so quickly. I believe it is a joyous thing, if these stories may find life once again among the humans.”

  “………”

  And so, the elder told his story—the story that had been passed down among the fairies, whose lifespans were far, far longer than humans’.

  Mile learned almost nothing.

  The elder’s tale was scarcely any different from that which Mile had already heard from Doctor Clairia, the elf, and the elder dragon, Berdetice. No, in fact, compared to theirs, this story was perhaps even more lacking in information.

  Well, it didn’t really matter. Even just finding out how much information had been passed down among the fairies was enough to satisfy the aim of this expedition, after all. Plus, she had set aside her whole five-day break for this endeavor, so to have achieved her goal on the very first day was a bonus.

  Besides, “fishing for fairy friends” had been incredibly fun…even if it was probably a nightmare for the fairies.