The War Begins
I left the estate and made my way to the gate I had to pass through to reach Barukh District 3.
But there was already a crowd of people waiting ahead of me.
My guess was that the gallery users had spread the word. Otherwise, there was no reason for people who lived outside the walls to be lining up to get in like this. Or maybe the residents of Barukh themselves had let the news slip.
With those thoughts drifting through my head, I waited in line, running mana through my body as I did.
Hummm—
It was mana invisible to everyone else's eyes. Anyone skilled enough to use mana themselves could probably read its flow, but most people in this otherworld couldn't manipulate mana at all. At best, mages and swordsmen.
I was still idly playing with the mana when it happened.
"Next."
My turn had finally come. I emptied out my belongings onto the table and submitted to the inspection — including the ring on my finger and the necklace around my neck, which I laid out with everything else.
The inspection dragged on for a moment. Then—
"Clear."
The guard, his expression far more serious than his usual look, shouted the word, and with that permission I was free to pick up my things and enter the fortress walls. Inside was better than outside, I figured. If the only threats out there were mediocre monsters, I could have just cleared them out myself and kept living at the estate — but this time my opponent was the Demon King's army. Far better to leave fighting them to the guards and Barukh's own military. There was no reason to get myself dragged onto a battlefield for nothing.
Step, step.
As I wandered through Barukh District 3, the whole city seemed to carry a deflated, tense air compared to usual. This probably wasn't just a feeling — it was fact.
That said, I was curious about one thing. Just what kind of system could spread the news of the Demon King's resurrection to every corner of the land this quickly? It was honestly impressive.
'Well, this isn't exactly the middle of nowhere, so I suppose it's possible.'
People said this place ranked a bit below Lukfelton, but it still sat somewhere between city and countryside. Decent population, news that traveled fast — that kind of place. Once I thought about it that way, the speed of the rumors made perfect sense.
So musing, I stepped into a nearby inn.
Inside, a pleasant-looking woman was minding the counter.
"Twelve silver for one night."
"Ah... then would ten nights be possible for one gold?"
"Mm... I don't think I can do that, sorry. We're about to get a lot busier."
"Tch. Fine, then just one night."
So saying, I paid the twelve silver, took my room key, and headed upstairs. The door creaked open with a rusty whine, and a room cleaner than I'd expected greeted me. The shower, regrettably, was outside. Though in this otherworld, that was only natural. Private showers in every room? Impossible. Having stayed in such luxurious places lately, I'd apparently started expecting strange things. I needed to recenter my mindset on the Middle Ages.
With that resolution made, I decided to start with a sigh.
"...It's not like I have anything to do right now anyway."
Just in case, I cast a barrier spell and an alarm spell before drifting off to sleep. The alarm would trigger the instant anyone entered the room, announcing the presence of an intruder. According to Sylvia, it was a spell adventurers used extremely often.
Hoping Sylvia was safe and well, I fell asleep.
And then I woke up.
Thankfully, the alarm spell hadn't gone off while I slept. Not that anyone was likely to pick the lock of an inn door in Barukh District 3. A dump this shabby probably wasn't worth robbing in the first place.
Still lying in bed, I connected to the gallery. If you asked me what the greatest convenience of arriving in this otherworld was, I'd say it was this — being able to browse every kind of post without moving a muscle. Not so much as a fingertip twitching.
'Convenient, all right.'
From where I stood, I couldn't begin to fathom how toweringly brilliant the person who built this gallery must be. Letting people who couldn't even use magic access something like this. It was almost surreal.
With that thought, I scanned the gallery's threads.
The gallery was a swamp of every kind of thread imaginable, but I carefully hand-picked five. These were the ones worth reading if you wanted a read on the current state of the world. I clicked the first.
"...That's harsh. And here I heard they're at least useful as test subjects."
Not that I'd experimented on anyone — Sylvia had just mentioned that whenever they posted a recruitment notice for volunteer test subjects, the applicants were overwhelmingly martial artists. It was a little shocking, honestly. That there were people willing to trade their own bodies for money. Shaking my head at the absurdity, I moved on to the next thread.
"So this one's still doing research, huh."
One thing was certain: whoever this was, they weren't a mage of any truly high attainment. Every mage of that caliber would have been summoned to the imperial court by now. Nobody at that level would still be running field research like this.
With that conclusion, I moved on.
'Honestly...'
A sigh escaped me. The man's words were noble enough, but his usual conduct had a way of undercutting them — whatever gravity his pronouncements were meant to carry never quite landed. Of course, that was his own karma to bear.
On to the next thread.
"To be fair, sending anything would be the weird move there."
However starved for brains the guy was, anyone who handed over their coordinates after a post like that would deserve whatever came next — a high-tier spell landing square on the marker and there'd be nothing left to bury. The ones offering to send food were the strange ones here.
With that thought, I opened the last thread.
Military conditions in this era were genuinely awful. Granted, things had improved somewhat since the Travelers arrived in this otherworld — but improved was not the same as fixed.
And so I took the temperature of the otherworld in one sweep. It seemed certain that the nation was deploying armies here and there on a national scale — the gallery had been flooded with proof-of-deployment posts, after all.
The gallery's greatest strength was that no matter how far apart two people were, they could talk. Of course, if the other person died, every one of their posts and comments vanished along with them. If you'd been chatting with someone and suddenly every trace of them disappeared... that would be a little heartbreaking, I imagined.
With that gloomy thought, I rose from the bed.
"Mm."
The day had to be started. A little magic practice was in order.