The Calm Before the Storm (1)
Diana’s endless food binge finally wrapped up, and we spilled out onto the street. The sunset glow at dusk was genuinely pretty.
Satten had suggested a short walk, so we were strolling along. Orphe was deep in conversation with him, diligently fishing for intel, which left me stuck babysitting Diana.
“So, how was that pork cutlet made from an insect with skinny little legs and twitchy antennae?”
“Don’t say it like that. It’s disgusting...”
Teasing her while looking after her turned out to be more fun than expected. Maybe I had a hidden talent for babysitting?
Murmur, murmur.
As we walked we ran into a crowd, everyone staring in the same direction like some concert was about to start. Curiosity got the better of me; I pretended to listen to Diana while zeroing in on the chatter around us.
“Look over there. It’s the Transformation Sword King.”
“He’s short, just like the rumors said.”
“Shh. You can’t just say that out loud.”
“Why not?”
“There might be Order Maintenance Force mixed in with the crowd.”
“Is the Transformation Sword King your buddy or something? Come with me.”
“See? Here they come.”
“Shit.”
The Transformation Sword King? One of the Seven Sword Kings had actually come out onto the street? Perfect chance to figure out whether that bastard was a samurai or not.
“They say the Transformation Sword King himself showed up. Let’s go take a look.”
I led the party into the throng. We were too far back to catch even a glimpse of him.
I shoved my way forward through the people, but at some point the companions who’d been trailing right behind me vanished. Had I been too fast?
Honestly, it was the slowpokes’ fault.
“When I was young, people disappeared one by one every night.”
Only now could I see the Transformation Sword King standing on the stage. He was speaking earnestly from behind what looked like a lectern, and just as the crowd had said, he was tiny. Maybe 160 centimeters? Shorter than Orphe.
“Humans are savage animals. The moment the lamp of law and order goes out, their ugly nature shows itself.”
I studied his face carefully. Slim and finely featured, he still looked like a boy. I’d heard the youngest of the Seven Sword Kings was the Flowing Sword King, so how old was this guy really?
His calm voice made him sound thirty or forty, though. Anti-aging with mana? Some magic tool’s effect? Suspicious as hell.
“In the name of the Transformation Sword King, I declare before you all: the lamp of Neo-Solitron will never go out.”
- Whoooooa!
The crowd went wild. The guy clearly had popular support.
Satisfied with the thunderous applause, the Transformation Sword King nodded.
“Allow me to introduce someone who will help me, the Sword Saint Society, and the Order Maintenance Force protect this city. Miss Irina?”
A young woman stepped onto the stage under the guidance of the soldiers standing behind him.
“Hello. I’m Irina Penhoff, a Rank-4 employee of the Red Whale Magic Tower.”
The Red Whale Magic Tower—the place that made my ninja suit. They’d supposedly partnered with the Sword Saint Society to build Neo-Solitron. Cooperating with a samurai outfit? That side needed investigating too.
“Behold. Streetlamps equipped with the latest technology.”
Click!
At Irina’s gesture, the streetlamps flanking the stage lit up with a crimson glow. Their output didn’t lose to Earth’s streetlights. Impressive tech.
“They run on mana, so ordinary people can’t operate them, but Magic Tower mages will be stationed here permanently, so there’s no need to worry. However...”
She let the sentence trail off, the corners of her mouth curling as her eyes rolled around. Was this woman insane?
“I’ve heard an amusing rumor. That these streetlamps come fitted with brainwashing sonic functions.”
The crowd burst out laughing like they’d just heard the funniest joke of their lives. Standing there alone with a serious face would’ve been awkward, so I clutched my stomach and laughed along. Acting like a weirdo would shatter my ninja concealment.
“Brainwashing sonic functions, huh. You hear all kinds of crap these days.”
“Oh, I remember. There used to be posters about that.”
“Posters? Those White Dolphin guys or whatever?”
“Total lunatics. ‘Breath of the Whale’? I cracked up the second I saw it.”
“If they had something like that they’d just conquer the world instead of running a Magic Tower.”
“Being successful is hard enough without weirdos harassing you.”
Brainwashing sonics. Magic could probably pull it off. Was I the only one taking this seriously?
These otherworlders’ sense of danger was catastrophically low.
“There are certainly plenty of people with vivid imaginations. Of course, nothing of the sort exists.
Ah, strange sounds might occasionally leak from the loudspeakers mounted on the lamps, but that’s simply part of the process of regulating the light with mana, so rest easy. It’s all part of the ‘Build a Metropolis Movement.’”
With that, Irina stepped down from the stage.
The Transformation Sword King started talking again—city dues, census stuff, pure nonsense. I’d heard everything worth hearing, so I slipped away.
A few minutes of walking and my companions came into view; I greeted them as I approached. No Satten, though.
“Tribo. You recorded everything, right?”
[Of course.]
“Where’d Satten go?”
[He expelled gas downward, then said something urgent had come up and vanished.]
“Just say he went to take a dump.”
Neo Satten, my ass. Still acting without any style—he had a long way to go.
Orphe was lost in thought about something, while Diana hummed to herself, stroking her belly that was swollen like a pregnant woman’s.
“Let’s head home.”
Streetlamps. Necessary for the people’s safety, sure, but also the perfect tool for interfering with Runaway Ninja work. Once those things were installed all over the roads, I wouldn’t be able to move freely.
As expected, the fight in Neo-Solitron wasn’t going to be easy.
Birds chirped and flowers bloomed in the morning light.
I rose with the Ninja Rising Technique, washed my face roughly, changed clothes with the Ninja Dressing Technique, and knocked on Orphe’s door.
I finished that whole process in under ten minutes. Instant-rise ninja.
“Robin? You can come in.”
Thankfully Orphe was already awake. Diligent kid who never slept in.
I opened the door to find her sitting on the bed in casual clothes, greeting me. Occupational habit kicked in the second I entered; I scanned the room. She’d cleaned—not a single hair on the floor. Had she gotten up even earlier than our agreed time?
After a quick morning greeting I casually checked whether she properly remembered today’s agenda.
“Orphe. Do you know how we should spend the day?”
The moment the words left my mouth it felt like I was grilling her outright. Well, no need to beat around the bush with a friend, so let’s call it honesty.
Orphe nodded and stood from the bed. Her blue hair, tied with a black ribbon, swayed gently.
Had she switched to a ponytail for perfect ordinary-person cosplay? She did look like a quiet city girl.
“Main objective: gather intel on Neo-Solitron. Act as unsuspiciously as possible. While we’re at it, buy curtains and other household goods plus everyday clothes.”
“Very good.”
Clap clap clap clap.
I couldn’t help applauding the perfect three-line summary.
“Great. Let’s head out right away.”
I stretched once, then left the house with Orphe. Around seven in the morning? The outside air felt pretty refreshing.
Today it was just me and Orphe on the move. Tribo stood out because of his bulk and mask; Diana was too young and eye-catching. Two healthy-looking young adults—us—made the least conspicuous combo.
“What kind of curtains do you want?”
“Black curtains.”
“Just black? What about the material?”
“Black and big. Material doesn’t matter.”
“We’re going to use them a long time, so we should get good ones. Mind if I pick the material?”
“Whatever.”
We walked the tree-lined street making the kind of ordinary conversation normal citizens would have, all to sell the act.
It was rush hour; plenty of people hurried past. One girl in something like a school uniform even ran by with an apple clenched in her mouth.
School uniform? Last night Satten had mentioned something about an academy. Curiosity got me, so I asked Orphe.
“Orphe. What exactly is an academy?”
“Academy? It’s an academic institution that trains knights and mages. There’s one in Neo-Solitron too.”
Like a knight school or magic school? I’d run into similar setups in Earth’s fiction, so I got the idea.
“You heard that from Satten too?”
“Yeah. Apparently they sometimes put requests up at the Adventurers’ Guild. Not sure of the exact reasons, but they occasionally need novice adventurers.”
“That’s a little weird.”
The only jobs an adventurer could do inside a school were trash cleanup, pet-rabbit poop scooping, or watering trees. For that you’d want professional cleaners, not adventurers.
“It’s not that strange. Sometimes they bring adventurers in just to hear their experiences. Adventurers know monster weak points and valuable herbs better than anyone.”
Even dog crap can be medicine, huh. I accepted it immediately.
“What about mages? What do those guys actually do?”
I’d been curious for a while. I’d never seen a mage, never even heard how they fought. All I knew was they were so rare you only found them in capitals or big cities with Magic Towers.
Neo-Solitron was a metropolis run by heavyweights like the Sword Saint Society and the Red Whale Magic Tower. During Runaway Ninja work I might end up fighting evil mages, so better learn fast.
“Hmm, how should I explain this...”
Orphe seemed to know a lot. Had she read it in a book? This wasn’t the kind of info you’d get from ordinary market books.
Maybe Orphe was the librarian’s daughter.
“You don’t know anything about them, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Hmm...”
“Explain it as simply as possible.”
An Earth native like me had no reason to know mages. The only ones I knew were the fantasy-novel types who yelled “Meteor!” or “Fireball!” or “Ice Lance!”
“You remember that mana is the source of life, right?”
“I do now.”
“We express mana from inside our bodies.”
“Right.”
“Mages are different. They draw mana from outside.”
Draw it from outside? That didn’t click. Did they suck up the mana scattered across the world like a dehumidifier?
Was that even possible?
Noticing my confusion, Orphe hurried on.
“Grass, trees, the ground—they say mana dwells in all of them.
Mages are special ability users who can use the mana contained there. A skilled mage can even steal the mana from grass and transfer it to a tree.”
Shit, now I understood even less. Asking had been my mistake. I cut her off before she could launch into more details and asked again.
“So can they shoot fire and wind? Just answer that.”
Yeah. That was all I needed. The rest of those nitpicky settings weren’t my problem.
“Mages aren’t a combat profession. The magic tools they create can cast all sorts of magic, but no mage can use magic without a medium.”
So this world’s mages were closer to scientists. Bottom line: just watch out for magic tools.
In that case nothing had really changed. Looks like I’d been worrying over nothing.
“You’ve changed a bit, haven’t you?”
“What?”
Orphe suddenly said something out of nowhere.
“You never used to ask about things like this. You’d just brush it off saying it was a pain.”
Had I? Maybe.
Truth was, until now there’d been no need to ask.
Whoever the enemy was, I just had to beat them to death, and three sentences from an otherworlder were enough to put me to sleep.
“Hmm...”
Originally I would’ve treated even the wild tribe girl Saserif’s words (“Anyway I didn’t kill the baby”) as excuses and cut her down.
Why had I listened to her? Thinking it over, the reason came quickly.
“The Flowing Sword King.”
Yeah. I’d changed after meeting her. I remembered my first encounter with Agatha, the one called the Flowing Sword King.
I’d been spying on the Crimson Flame Dragon Knights and the Flowing Sword King when I got caught.
If she hadn’t been stronger than I expected, I’d have killed her on the spot.
Unfortunately her power exceeded my expectations. Since killing her was tough, I pretended to chat and tried to smooth things over.
But in that conversation I sensed a possibility. The Flowing Sword King I’d been sure was a samurai might actually be a decent person.
“The Flowing Sword King? What about her?”
“Anyway, there’s that kind of thing.”
That was probably why I’d decided to hear Saserif out too.
For the sake of possibilities I couldn’t yet see.
“—Ahh.”
The genius ninja Shin Nobin who even blasphemes the gods—had I grown once again?
Sometimes even I was afraid of myself.