Chapter 104: Parting with Bert
Chapter 104: Parting with Bert
In truth, before Ras came to this world, wristwatches had already almost been phased out in Korea, and people carried smartphones instead. But in terms of putting something into a pocket, taking it out, and checking the time, it felt similar.
When Ras first realized that, he laughed hollowly to himself.
“What should we do now?”
Ras asked while looking at Ella across from him. Normally, after dinner, he would have gone to Bert’s house to receive magic lessons. But now, for who knew how long, there would continue to be days without magic lessons.
“Why? Are you bored because you’re not going to class?”
Ella somehow looked pleased. In truth, she did not like magic or mages very much, so she had never been particularly fond of Ras going off to study. Moreover, she had seen Bert only once before, and the fact that Bert was a beautiful woman was also one of the reasons it made her uncomfortable.
And even aside from that, she liked having more time to spend with him after work. Unlike at the beginning, Ella’s feelings were no longer simple fondness. Their relationship had deepened completely.
“No. It’s not that I’m bored. It’s just that my time suddenly opened up, so I don’t know what to do.”
Some time ago, Bert had said she would soon need to go somewhere for Ancient Magic research. But she only said it and showed no real signs of leaving, so Ras had not thought about it seriously. Then, just yesterday, she suddenly said something had come up that she urgently needed to participate in and left.
As far as Ras was concerned, there was nothing else he could say besides wishing her a safe trip. Because he had formed a rather special master-disciple relationship with her in this unfamiliar world, he did feel some regret, but that was all.
And he had already learned everything he absolutely needed from her. He had learned the foundation needed for self-study, and she had also connected him to the Ancient Magic research community’s contact methods and markets where he could buy ancient magic books and items. In truth, she had already taught him everything she could as a teacher.
“See you next time.”
Bert smiled and gave Ras the same farewell as usual when he left after finishing the lesson. Ras felt something rise in his chest, but he smiled back and bowed his head in greeting.
They were not parting forever anyway, and she said she would return someday, so as Bert said, they could simply meet again then.
Back in the present, Ella saw Ras looking somewhat relieved yet slightly gloomy. After thinking for a moment, she perked up the ears on top of her head and came up with an idea.
“Then how about we go for a drive after eating?”
In a little while, the rush hour for people commuting to and from work would pass. Of course, since it was that kind of time, it would gradually grow dark, but a city had its own charm even in the darkness.
“Should we?”
Ras found the idea rather tempting. During this time until now, he had always been busy studying magic, so he had been missing that sense of leisure. In that sense, riding around without any particular destination while looking at the bustling city scenery seemed like it would give Ras exactly the relaxed feeling he wanted.
After leaving the restaurant, the two of them stood briefly in the night breeze before getting into the car.
“Where shall I take you?”
Radmi waited for the two of them in perfect readiness, neatly dressed in his chauffeur’s uniform. In truth, they had spent some time in the breeze to give him time to prepare as well.
Ras was paying him, but making him wait indefinitely inside a cramped car felt wrong. Even aside from humane considerations, Radmi was the person responsible for serving as Ras’s legs and ensuring safe driving, so it was necessary to maintain his condition to some degree.
That was why whenever they came to a restaurant like this, Ras ordered a share for him too and gave him time to rest. Radmi was probably always so respectful not simply because he was an employee, but also because of Ras’s consideration.
“We just want to drive around. Is that all right?”
Ella responded to Radmi on Ras’s behalf. Since she always managed his schedule these days, it had almost become a habit.
“Yes, of course. Is there any particular direction you would like?”
“No. Just drive around the city as you see fit.”
“Yes. Leave it to me.”
Soon, the car began driving through the darkening streets, and Ras sank into the soft seat.
After watching the darkening streets and the distant sunset shining in through the window for some time, night arrived.
The streets of this world at night were much darker than Earth’s. As expected, there were electric lights everywhere, but they were not fluorescent lights, only incandescent bulbs, so they were dim.
That was why the night streets here were orange.
Radmi turned on the headlights.
They felt as if they barely drove away only the darkness directly in front of them. After driving along the road like that for a while, they entered a commercial district. It could not compare to Ranchert, but quite a few tall buildings were packed together, and here and there, lights were still on, perhaps because people were working overtime.
The shops on the lower floors each brightly lit their signs and drew in customers.
When they drove farther and reached the entertainment district, this place felt as though it was only just beginning. The streets were packed with people. Bars, gambling houses, and prostitutes could be seen here and there along the streets. Ras’s eyes naturally drifted toward human, Elf, and Beastman women, but he still could not quite grasp the sex appeal of Orcs, Dwarves, or Lizardmen.
Ras had no particular interest in prostitution, but since his gaze had gone there even briefly, he glanced at Ella’s reaction. However, she did not seem to care what Ras was looking at. She too seemed to find the night streets enjoyable and simply looked around with wide eyes.
After driving through the night streets for quite some time, Radmi soon began circling through a residential district on the outskirts. This was not an ordinary residential district either, but an area where large mansions gathered, so there was plenty to see.
Rich people in this world usually lived in places like this. Then again, Earth was the same. Korea was the unusual case for preferring apartments; generally, when people became wealthy, they bought mansions to live in. No, come to think of it, truly rich people on Earth probably did that too.
Ras looked at the mansions, which were adorned by darkness, lights, and shadows, making them seem even more magnificent and impressive than they did during the day.
“They’re huge.”
“Right?”
Ella leaned her head toward Ras’s shoulder and whispered, and Ras lowered his voice in the same way as he answered her. During today’s drive, the two of them had been like this the whole time.
As Ras looked at the mansions, it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he should start looking for a new house as well.
Since Ella was at Ras’s house every day lately and only went back at night to sleep, it seemed like they could simply buy a large house and live together.
And even aside from Ella, he had now become far too famous, so for safety’s sake, he felt like he should live in a mansion in a place like this rather than an apartment downtown.
Of course, Ras had plenty of defensive items equipped and had learned magic, and Ella was also a Mana Manifestor, so ordinary robbers would not be much of a problem. But the best approach would be to eliminate risk factors altogether.
It was also because, now that Bert had left, he felt he needed to stand on his own as a mage.
It might have been trying to dress up appearances too much from the outside, but he wanted to gather lots of magic books, magical tools, and materials, then set up something like a mage’s study and laboratory.
And aside from that, he thought it might also be nice to have something like a game room with computers, consoles, and arcade machines.
Life in the apartment was not bad, and he had been so busy lately that he had not even thought about such things. But now that a trigger had made the idea occur to him, his desire to do it grew stronger and stronger.
Ras thought it over thoroughly on the way home through the night streets in Radmi’s car, then made up his mind.
Naturally, simply deciding to get a mansion did not mean one would immediately appear with a snap. Finding a private residence was not something he could assign to someone else, so Ras had no choice but to personally visit real estate agencies.
“I’ll contact you immediately if I find a suitable property.”
“Yes. Please do.”
It would have been nice if a vacant place happened to be available, but he had no such luck. Ras briefly considered just building one himself, but he did not want to wait several years until it was complete. For now, he decided to search first and think again later if he truly could not find a place he liked.
While Ras was out looking for a new house like that, projects at his companies continued progressing one by one.
Among them, at Meta Hardware, Karkov, having finished hard disk development, returned to developing the company network system he had been working on before.
“It won’t take that long.”
Karkov sounded confident. It was a project he had already progressed quite far with before it was temporarily delayed due to hard disk development, and he had already thought up technical solutions in advance.
To Ras, Karkov simply seemed reliable. Based on the tendencies he had shown so far, he was absolutely not the type to bluff.
“I’ll trust you. But if possible, I’d like you to produce a prototype within two months…”
“Yes. Mass production would be another matter, but a prototype should be no problem.”
Ras did not want to rush him, but he could not help it. Project “Spirit” was scheduled for release in two months. Before that, they needed to install a network system at least at Meta Soft.
Currently, personal communication cards had finished development, and there was already quite a bit of inventory stored in the warehouse. But those used the telephone system as it was, so they could only connect one-to-one and could not support players’ network play.
It was not completely impossible, but it would require several computers and multiple phone numbers to be opened, making it extremely inefficient.
In any case, since Karkov said it was possible, Ras decided to wait and see.
And since the topic had come up, Ras decided to inspect the development status of Project “Spirit” as well.
The last thing he checked was that all the Spirits appearing in the game had been finalized, the basic story and setting were determined, and the world and system had been implemented to some extent.
By now, even if it was not quite at the prototype stage, it should be time for them to have created something that could be run experimentally.
“Ah! President, you’re here?”
When Ras entered Meta Soft Development Team 1, Diska greeted him cheerfully first. Unlike when he first arrived, the boy had grown quite a bit now. At first, he had strongly felt like a young boy, but in less than two years, he had become a young man.
“Yeah. Keep up the good work.”
Since his body had grown, he also felt more competent at work, so from Ras’s perspective, there was nothing bad about it. However, when Ras first brought him in, he had slightly hoped that if Diska showed interest in games, he could teach him and use him as a developer. That expectation had missed the mark somewhat.
Now that finding developers was no longer that difficult, Ras was not too disappointed, but since he had known Diska for quite a long time, it felt a little unfortunate that he did not show much ambition to improve.
Starting with Diska’s greeting, the other employees also met Ras’s eyes and greeted him one by one.
“Huh?!”
While accepting their greetings, Ras saw Garazt’s screen and instantly forgot all about Diska’s matter and the employees’ greetings, focusing entirely on it.
“Is this running?”
“Yes? Yes. It’s only the battle system, but it can be played for now. Capturing works without problems too.”
On a background that seemed to be a lake, a silver serpent-shaped Spirit wearing a crown faced off against a sharp-looking red bird-like Spirit summoned by the character.
It was a very simple battle screen. But somehow, it gave off the tense feeling of facing a Spirit one-on-one in the wild. Along with that, memories of Pokémon, which he enjoyed long ago, also rose up.
In truth, Ras had intended to change this battle screen into something different.
After all, having Spirits appear one at a time and fight in turns felt unrealistic and too simple.
So he had tried to make three appear at once, like Meta Soft’s other role-playing games, and create more strategic battles. But once he placed three Spirits on the screen, he realized something was wrong.