59. A Beaming School Trip
59. A Beaming School Trip
It’d been a while since we’d had a peaceful afternoon. I spread the newspapers out and clicked my tongue.
"Damn newspaper bastards. Why are they giving our studio shit?"
Every single one came from a different paper, yet pages one through three were all crammed with content about Magical Mari, without exception.
It was mainly praise for No Forest For Mascot, which delivered a message of equality, but concern that the main series's recent direction had grown so extreme that many people were imitating it.
One recurring criticism compared it with No Forest For Mascot: “If you’re capable of this kind of direction and message, why do you keep broadcasting nothing but provocative material?”
This message was mostly coming from old nobles.
Nikolai, apparently unaccustomed to this type of press attack, was seriously agonizing over whether to change the magical girl series's direction.
Naturally, there was no way I'd look kindly on an attempt to mess with my artistic vision.
I patted the seriously troubled Nikolai on the back and transmuted the newspapers into paper balls.
"That's all just old farts talking nonsense. In my world, it was exactly the same — the second anything happened, people blamed games, blamed movies, blamed comics. It's no different here."
Desperately trying to link killing people to farming-simulator games wasn't a specialty unique to my previous life.
This world was the same.
"They said the same thing when I made the John Armstrong Series and Wrestle Kingdom. Just ignore them."
"But those people are nobles."
"If they cross the line, I'll take care of it, so you just focus on the work."
Even if the production got ruined, I'd ruin it by going overboard myself. I wouldn't tolerate those people butting in.
If things went sideways, I was even prepared to publicly reveal John Armstrong's identity and crush them with the power of public opinion.
"Well... I get it. But what about our schedule?"
"What schedule?"
"The school trip's in a few days, remember?"
"Ah, right."
I'd completely forgotten, but would you believe it if I said all of this stemmed from the school trip?
Diane had decided two months earlier that the school trip would be to Karamzin Territory.
After that, I met Riv, Nikolai was forced to travel for work by the fervent demands of a suspicious organization, and we wrecked two trains in Karamzin Territory.
And before I knew it, that time had already arrived.
It was September. I did wonder whether school trips were normally held at this time, but it was far too late to question it now.
I immediately checked the schedule.
"The filming time's going to be pretty tight."
"Now that I think about it, the Political Science Department, the Hero Department, and the Faculty of Foresight are all going to different places for the school trip. Filming during the trip is probably out of the question, right?"
"Obviously."
Even I wasn't crazy enough to chase them down on a school trip and lock them up in the studio.
"So do we take a break from filming during that time?"
"Take a break? Why would we take a break? Do you think the viewers will understand our situation?"
But our viewers were that crazy.
So I had a solution prepared for this.
"Then are you planning to film during that time too?"
"No. I’m going to build up a reserve of episodes before we leave."
"But we don't have a backlog."
"So we've got to film even harder than we are now."
The staff members listening to my conversation with Nikolai went pale.
Carlos, who at least gave up faster than anyone, had already resigned himself. He pulled fatigue restoratives and mana potions out of his bag and downed them.
I was sorry to the frozen crew, but it couldn't be helped.
Last time I had gone a bit spectacularly overboard and people's expectations had ballooned. If we went on hiatus now?
The Dina Armstrong Recoilless Rifle Armstrong Cannon installed in front of the club room would never forgive us.
"Whoa. The build quality is high~"
I murmured while looking out the window at the Dina Armstrong Recoilless Rifle Armstrong Cannon.
Shit.
I should have realized it when the dwarves gathered in front of our club room after the broadcast ended.
Since I couldn't very well dismantle something that was already completed, I had no choice but to leave the weapon there.
It was absolutely not because every time anyone mentioned dismantling it, the barrel swung toward our club room.
Meanwhile, whenever our Diane had a spare moment, she'd go and lift the Dina Armstrong... or 'Dina's Magic Wand' for short, once every time she passed it.
For the film, the barrel had originally been made from a light, fragile alloy because it was meant to be discarded after one use. The dwarves, however, rebuilt it from solid steel in the name of romance, turning it into something no human could carry.
A recoilless rifle had become a towed cannon.
Diane nevertheless lifted it with telekinesis, insisting it was romantic.
Whenever she occasionally used the Dina avatar for event purposes and lifted that monstrosity, the fans would shower her with cheers.
I sighed and turned my gaze from outside the window back indoors.
When I subtly hinted at the magic wand's existence to the staff, they couldn't bring themselves to protest either.
"Allen, why are you treating us like this?"
"Did you forget? This is Bon Voyage Studio's foundation."
It seemed these guys had forgotten in the first place, but we'd started making 'Magical Girl Magical Mari' to survive.
It was too late now to grumble about being blackmailed into giving up a hiatus.
Clap! Clap!
"Alright. Starting today, we're working through the night."
Sleep on the school trip.
*
A few days later
In a corner of the ship heading for the Karamzin territory, one man was sleeping soundly, surrounded by three women.
A situation others would be jealous of, calling it a harem at first glance.
But not a single person in the Hero Department, not even a professor, envied that man.
"G-g-g-guh..."
A man snoring like he was in combat, and women sprawled out like half-corpses.
It was Allen, Celestia, Ailey, and Diane.
The people on the ship knew that the lights in their club room had not gone out even once over the past few days.
The reason they were sleeping huddled together wasn't because the man was particularly popular. It was simply that the seat was the best spot for sleeping, so the other students had given it up to them.
As proof, the way they slept wasn't the romantic type where they leaned on each other's shoulders. It was a state where you couldn't find a single trace of romance: eyes rolled back, limbs slack and hanging halfway off the chairs, or piled up on the chairs like sandwiches.
The only survivor in that group was the magical girl Isis—Kylie.
"Kylie. Aren't you tired?"
She had clearly been up all night too, yet her friend worried about her standing there with her arms crossed and her eyes wide open.
Just as her friend was about to advise her not to overdo it, the sound of soft breathing came from Kylie.
Hearing that sound, her friend seriously wondered what on earth that studio was.
*
"Whoa. A magic trick that makes time disappear."
When I opened my eyes, Karamzin Territory stretched out before me.
I had no idea how we had departed by ship but were disembarking from a train, but in any case, I had reached the territory.
The familiar air greeted me.
There was no way it wouldn't be familiar, given how I had spent the last two months filming here nonstop.
"Ow, ow... I think I've got a stiff neck."
Ceres got off the train, massaging her shoulder.
Ailey, who had used her as a bed and slept like a log, subtly averted her eyes.
I looked around the station, breathing in the deeply familiar smell of train steam.
Aside from our film crew, the students had long since scattered the moment they arrived in the territory, gathering in groups of friends.
They'd probably come to the Empire's most famous tourist destination, so they were quickly moving to play as aggressively as possible.
But we couldn't empathize with their feelings.
After two months of filming, Karamzin Territory had long since ceased to be a tourist destination to us and become a workplace.
"So, what do we do now?"
"..."
If the academy had assigned us somewhere to go, we could at least have forced ourselves to move, but instead it had simply told us to wander around as we pleased.
Faced with sudden, unlimited freedom, we had no idea what to do. All we could manage was to stand blankly on the platform and look around.
After wandering for a few minutes like that, we followed Diane's suggestion and headed to the Duke's residence, which had practically become our lodging by now.
*
"It's been a while."
"Hello, Your Grace."
"It's only been a week. Your burns haven't healed yet, I see."
Of course not, you bastard. What did he think I was, some other race? He had practically roasted my flesh, and he expected it to heal naturally in a week?
The words rose to the tip of my tongue, but the moment I remembered he was a nuclear missile, my anger came under control.
Of course. The nuclear missile was absolutely right.
The Calamity Duke had terrified me at first, but our relationship had improved enough that I could now discuss official matters with him without trembling.
That did not mean we could chat casually, much less dine side by side and make small talk as we were doing now.
'Everything about following Diane is great, except I wish I could do something about this.'
After finishing a meal where I couldn't even taste what I was eating, the Duke called me to his office.
I had my guard up the moment I stepped into the office, and the Calamity Duke looked at me with a strange expression.
"...What are you doing?"
"Uh... preparing to die?"
"Will that let you live?"
"?"
He smirked.
Wait. What did the Calamity Duke just say?
Was that... a joke?
No, before that. Was that man even capable of telling a joke?
When I looked at the Calamity Duke with that question in my eyes, his gaze shifted slightly awkwardly to the side.
'Whoa. It was real.'
I couldn't react because I had never expected a joke like that to come out of the Calamity Duke's mouth.
No, seriously, why was he pulling stuff he'd never done before?
But no amount of lamenting could restore the atmosphere once it had been ruined.
I hurriedly searched through my memories of a past life.
I might not have looked it, but I used to be a non-commissioned officer.
In an army built from absurdity and irrationality, NCOs learned to wag their tails at officers as second nature.
So reacting to an older guy tossing something out as a so-called joke wasn't that hard...
Wasn't...
'Shit. I'd never actually been a sycophant.'
I had barely become an NCO before the zombie apocalypse and war broke out. When would I have had time to learn flattery?
Having stars on your shoulders did not stop zombies from biting or bullets from hitting you.
The higher-ups understood that too, so once the situation got that bad, they dropped their authority and only judged based on skill.
So I didn't know how to navigate social life.
I was only good at rolling around with a gun wherever they pointed on the map.
'What was I supposed to do.'
While I was wrestling with that, the Calamity Duke had been gauging my reaction the whole time.
An officer who didn't know how to tell a proper joke and an NCO who didn't know how to flatter, left alone in a room together.
What was this if not the gas chamber?
The suffocating silence was ended by the Calamity Duke clearing his throat.
"Ahem. Take this."
He handed me a familiar mission order.
Before accepting it, I looked back and forth between the order and the Duke with the question of whether I needed to transform into John Armstrong first, but he answered with a gesture that just told me to take it.
'Nice.'
How long had it been since I'd received something intuitively, without code words or complicated procedures?
It was really nice not having to rack my brain and make a complex mess out of making contact.
I opened the mission order with a fluttering heart, wondering what kind of mission was waiting for me today.
With Duke Karamzin's cooperation, turn the filming location of the Skeleton Train scene into a tourist attraction.
"?"
I looked at the order and rubbed my eyes.
But even after rubbing my eyes and reading the orders again, the words remained the same.
I considered whether a new code system I didn't know about had been created,
held the order up to the sunlight,
Even when I tried reading the letters vertically.
No matter how I looked at it, the content written in the order was to turn the set into a tourist attraction.
'...Why?'
With that unresolved question, I showed the order to the Duke as well.
Normally I wasn’t supposed to show it to anyone else, but he was involved in the mission and I’d been ordered to obtain his cooperation, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Duke Karamzin also saw the contents of the order and couldn't erase his awkward expression (presumed).
But having more experience working with the imperial family than I did, he quickly adapted and handed the order back to me.
Along with an official appointment letter as a tour guide for the Duke's territory.
"I'll be counting on you from this afternoon onward. I haven't had that wreckage cleaned up yet, so as you mentioned last time, find a way to transform it into a tourist attraction."
If it had been up to me, I would’ve brought our transmutation expert Ailran, but this was an imperial decree, so I couldn’t take her.
Moreover, she was from the Kingdom, so I couldn’t bring her under any circumstances.
"John Armstr... no. Allen Price. I will go carry out my mission."
Though I questioned the imperial order, I set out to carry out the mission in dutiful silence as a soldier.
*
Duke Karamzin, left behind in the office after Allen departed, was silently staring at the door the young man had left through.
Once his presence had sufficiently faded into the distance, he took his eyes off the door and opened a drawer.
Inside it lay a single command document, stamped side-by-side with the seal of the Emperor and the seal of the Duke.
- From the moment the orders are delivered to Allen until the mission ends, provide him with every possible support.
- Comply with all of his requests.
- Turn a blind eye to everything he has done recently.
.
.
.
There were roughly twenty-six additional provisions, but they had already been fulfilled and required no further attention.
However, while it was not an order, the final article of the command was something even the Duke could not possibly overlook.
- All of this is an operation conducted under the command of the Puppet Duchess. Do not question it under any circumstances.