38. ???
38. ???
"We are heading to the Sanctuary of Parma from now on."
"Yes. By carriage, thanks to you, Boss."
"Tsk, you grumble a lot. You should embrace some hardships while you're young. You can't get so spoiled just from riding a portal a few times."
"No, if you hadn't... I spoke out of turn. That was a bit cathartic, though."
"Haha. That's a man's way."
Nikolai and I finished sightseeing in the capital and hailed a suitable express bus.
There were trains, but like the portals, we were cut off at the ticket booth.
But we couldn't just wait until the ban was lifted to go.
Vacation ended in a month, so when was I supposed to film my movie?
In the end, we had to pay a fortune for a magical carriage.
It was too big to be a taxi, too small to be a bus, and awkwardly sized for a van full of people.
It would've been easiest to picture it as a fantasy stagecoach with the horses removed and magical engineering added in their place.
As soon as I closed the carriage door, I told him our destination.
"To the Sanctuary of Parma, please."
"Oh dear. It'll take nearly a day to get there, will you be alright?"
"We have enough money."
*Jingle.*
When I showed him my coin purse, the coachman nodded and started the carriage.
As his mana flowed into the control crystal, the engine roared and the carriage began to tremble.
Having left the stop, the carriage rattled down the highway.
As we ran along a surprisingly well-paved road for medieval times, Nikolai spoke up.
"Twelve hours? It must be farther away than I thought."
"The distance isn't the problem; the fact that we can't speed up is."
Although the Sanctuary of Parma was said to be right next to the capital, that was only by the standards of a world map.
In reality, the distance from the capital to the sanctuary was nearly the same as Seoul to Busan.
In modern society, that journey took a little over four hours without traffic.
But the carriages of this world couldn't go that fast.
The paving of the road was an issue, but they also had to consider bandits and monsters.
Since the roads were destroyed and off-limits orders were issued practically every other day because of them, we had to plan for twelve hours if we wanted to go safely.
It was too long to just sleep through, so Nikolai tried striking up a random conversation.
"That dishwasher you gave my mother—there’s nowhere in my city that sells one. Where did you get it?"
"You can usually find magical appliances like that at a major trading company near a Magic Tower."
"That surprised me. I didn't imagine an invention like that existed in this era—Ack!"
Nikolai suddenly clamped his mouth shut.
"Uh..."
"Why did you suddenly stop talking?"
"Well..."
He pointed to the front and glanced at the coachman.
"Aha."
The coachman paid no mind to Nikolai's attitude.
Even so, the way he kept watching his words made it seem he didn't know 'that fact.'
I shrugged my shoulders and called the coachman.
"Coachman?"
"..."
He didn't react at all.
This time, I knocked on the small door between the driver's seat and the cabin.
*Knock knock*
"What is it?"
"Is there a place to rest along the way? I'll pay extra."
"You don't have to. Let's rest once after about two hours."
"Thank you."
The coachman closed the door again and focused on driving.
Nikolai realized something from my conversation with him.
"Could it be that he can't hear our conversation from the front?"
"Yep."
"Why would they have such a function...?"
"People who don't use a train or portal to leave the capital usually have conversations you're better off not hearing."
"Ah."
That was how you stayed in respectable society.
The underworld was surprisingly territorial and didn't like dragging uninvolved people down without reason. Simply keeping your ears shut like this let you maintain a natural distance from it.
Only then did Nikolai continue the conversation with relief.
"—To continue what I was saying, this world's remarkable. I never expected devices like these in this era."
"People live much the same everywhere. It's only a matter of whether science or magic develops."
When the weather was hot, people thought of devices that created wind.
In my previous life that meant a spinning fan; here it meant a magic-stone device enchanted with wind magic.
And beyond that, air conditioners and refrigerators.
Adding a dishwasher wasn't strange at all.
"Magic Towers usually research things like that."
Enchant-related devices were especially common, so many inventions came from the Golden Magic Tower.
"Then the Golden Magic Tower must be the richest?"
"Not necessarily. The other Magic Towers each had major business lines of their own."
The Dimension Magic Tower's portal and teleportation services, the Protection School's security business, the Illusion Magic Tower's CG processing, and so on.
Each had a powerful commercial specialty and wasn't any less wealthy than the Golden Magic Tower.
Oh, come to think of it, the Body-Strengthening School was poor until they signed with Wrestle Kingdom and Magical Mari.
"Oh. Interesting. So, is that flying thing over there an airplane?"
Where Nikolai pointed, an aircraft resembling a plane flew at roughly the same speed as our carriage.
"Huh?"
"What's wrong?"
"I've never seen that before either."
"..."
The object gradually got closer.
I couldn't make it out at first in the darkness, but once it drew closer, I recognized it.
It was a Flying Ray.
"What?"
"Huh?"
While I was momentarily taken aback by the absurd situation, the ray passed ahead of our carriage.
And once it got a bit ahead, its hatch opened and people poured out.
Each of the people pouring from the ray wore either a smiling or crying mask.
"For fuck’s sake. Seriously."
Those damn cultists really found a new way to appear every time.
Why did their entrance scene change every time?
It would've been nice if they'd put that effort toward helping the world.
Regardless, the airborne troops—rather, the cultists—poured from the ray’s belly and headed straight for our carriage.
Naturally, the coachman had been watching this whole process.
I opened the door to the driver's seat and told the coachman to stop the carriage.
"What do you plan to do?"
"I'll be the decoy, so you run away in the meantime."
"I can't do that. Abandoning a passenger and running away would make my medal weep."
"A medal?"
He took out a medal from a drawer under the driver's seat and showed it off proudly.
"I may not look it, but I was once a knight. A cultist's poisoned arrow took me in the knee, so now I'm a driver."
"Then you've got even less reason to worry about me. I may not look it, but I'm a Hero."
"Isn't a Hero a guest?"
"Huh?"
It was my turn to be flustered by his resolute attitude.
"I once drove a carriage full of comrades out of a city overrun by cultists."
"Huh? That's the Night of Killain—"
"Not to brag, but I survived there."
It was definitely bragging.
But instead of bragging about his deeds at that time, he shifted the gear of the carriage.
"It's going to shake a lot!"
*Clatter! Thud!*
The carriage shook violently.
It seemed we had run over a cultist.
The carriage plowed through the airborne assault, dodging, striking, and running over cultists without losing momentum.
Whenever an attack came at the carriage, he performed a spectacular evasive maneuver and drove through it.
"Ha ha ha ha—!!"
Adrenaline must have flooded his head; he laughed like a maniac as he drove through the chaos.
Nikolai bounced around the rear compartment like he was on a Tagada ride.
*Crash!*
"UWAAH!!!"
At that moment, the rear door burst open. A cultist tore it clean off and went tumbling into the distance with it.
Just as Nikolai, unable to control his bouncing body, was about to fly out the door, I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and sat him back down next to me.
"Thank you! Boss! Oh dear!"
"Hold the handle tight! I can't keep holding onto you!"
I caught a crossbow bolt flying through the open doorway, transmuted it into needles, and hurled them at a cultist approaching from behind on something resembling a horse.
When he fell off his mount and dragged other cultists with him, the coachman, who was watching through the rearview mirror, cheered.
"Whew~! You're impressive, Hero!"
"It’s an honor to ride with you, Jenkins!"
"You know me?"
"You’re the only coachman who survived the Night of Killain!"
Amid the muffled roar of wind around the racing carriage, we briefly recognized the bond between fellow soldiers.
Anyone who rescued 120 people with one carriage should've received the Golden Dragon Medal.
Come to think of it, there was a similar person in my past life.
Right.
Hexo Heights.
It was a movie our medic never got tired of praising.
Maybe I should make a movie about him someday if I got the chance.
"Melvin Jenkins! Since fate brought us together, let’s make a movie sometime!"
"I’d love to work with a Hero like you!"
"Is this really the time for jokes like that—Ack!"
Whoops. Looks like Nikolai bit his tongue.
But there was something Nikolai didn't know.
In a situation like this, you had to joke or you'd lose your mind.
That's why soldiers cracked stupid jokes in the middle of battle: to dilute the fear, even if only a little.
"Jenkins! Is there anything else we need to shake these bastards?"
"That angry-faced bastard on the horse over there put a tracking mark on the carriage! If you deal with him and the ray in the sky, we'll be fine!"
"Leave it to me!"
I felt bad for Nikolai, but I welded his clothes and shoes to the carriage floor to hold him in place, then climbed out of the cargo compartment and onto the roof.
Then, just in case, I assembled a launcher from the case I had brought with me.
Ahh.
Power begot light, and at last that power dwelled within me.
I pulled the trigger, savoring a weight I hadn't felt in far too long, and the brilliant flash filled me with strength.
*Fwoooosh!*
With a nostalgic sound, the rocket blew away the cultist in the angry mask and the bastards next to him.
I raised the launcher and fired at the ray.
The ray couldn't stand up to the launcher and went down after about three shots.
Watching that beautiful flame, I felt I couldn't control the adrenaline rushing to my head without shouting this.
"Rictus-hu Akbar!!!"
"Hu! Akbar!!!!"
Mr. Jenkins, who had no idea what it meant and just screamed along, was a bonus.
As expected of a former soldier, adrenaline must have been flooding his brain too.
Even in this chaos, my sensitive hearing didn't miss Nikolai's muttering.
"Sigh... this place is insane."
*
*Clatter clatter.*
As the half-wrecked carriage continued down the road, Nikolai and I lay exhausted on the cargo-floor boards.
Jenkins slowed down out of consideration for us.
Staring at the night sky through the missing roof, I muttered without thinking.
"Wow. I haven't felt this in a long time."
"What feeling?"
"This ride. I experienced it in Busan."
"Ah, I've also ridden a Busan taxi—"
"No, not that. When zombies overran Busan, a bus driver evacuated a load of people. The ride felt just like this."
"Boss, you're joking, right?"
"Huh? I'm not joking. Zombies. You don't know zombies?"
"The zombies I know?"
"If by zombies you mean those damn things that can't communicate, lunge mouth-first at every healthy person they see, don't stop moving after being shot, run around with their guts hanging out, and have more stamina than humans, then yes."
"Wait, you said it was a world war?"
"Yeah. Zombies broke out, cities were sealed, then the United States and Russia started launching nukes. World War—bam."
"No... that's insane... No wonder you'd lost it..."