Chapter 7 (1/2)

Chapter 7 – The Sleeping Maiden＊

“…And with this, I’m done.”

In one of the rooms in the ruin, whilst reading the various information projected on a giant screen, he finished what he was doing after only a few minutes.

After Gran had left and Luru had gone into the ruins to have a look, though the exterior had been worn down, he found that the insides were quite splendid you could say, and had been broken in few places, and with its facilities almost all in working condition.

Thanks to the demon race’s prided magic installations, the system was still taking care of the maintainance of this facility, and this Magus Machine was one of the terminals of the maintainance system. Since Luru could send signals from the central installation, he was relieved at being able to shut down the Magus Machines outside.

With this, he no longer had anything in particular to do so he could have just returned to the village, but Luru felt the desire to know every corner of this ruin.

The central installation had been located not very far from the stairs, but it seemed that it maintained the entirety of the ruin and there was a map still in there.

Because of that, Luru understood that he had was still just at the entrance to the facility.

In other words, the ruin still continued further in, and it seemed that the possibility of there being clues on the ancient demon race was high.

Since he was already here, he wondered if there was any information in this room about what happened after he had died as the demon king, but found that there was nothing aside from things related to the installation, and even that was of the bare minimum level.

It was as though they were trying to hide something.

The level of difficulty in finding information was enough to make him feel as such.

It might have been lucky that he had managed to shut down the Magus Machines this quickly.

Having said that though, after considerign that it was because of this that this facility had managed to remain after all this time even after the humans defeated the demons, Luru held complicated feelings about it.

Regarding the Magus Machines, when he shut them down he had a check to see what their objectives were. The Lupes Gigantes had been tasked with the maintainance of the exposed above-ground areas, and the Cannon Apis had been charged with keeping surveillance of the surrounding areas.

While they did so, if they discovered anything abnormal, they would eliminate them if they approached within a certain range.

It seemed that Luru was correct about the Cannon Apis and Lupes Gigantes having different range of surveillances, and unlike the Cannon Apis that had attacked as far as the village, the Lupes Gigantes didn’t move beyond 10 metres from the ruin.

Because of the technological strength of the ancient demon race, the exposed above-ground portions were durable even with the pa.s.sage of time, but having said that, they wouldn’t be fine for eternity.

Maintainance would be required once every few hundred years, and because of some bad luck, or perhaps you could say good luck, Gran and Yuumis had stumbled upon that exact maintainance day by coincidence.

It seems that after the Lupes Gigantes completed their maintainance of the broken walls above ground, they were going to seal up the entrance to the underground portions of the ruin with a new, airtight wall, so this time had truly been a coincidence.

Including the fact that Luru, a former demon king, was here, he felt that it was hard to say if Gran and Yuumis had good luck or bad luck, but perhaps ‘coincidence’ is actually something like that, thought Luru as he waited for them with a smile.

As for the other things that he came to understand from searching the central installation room, it was that this place wasn’t built for the sake of the war against humans, but was to house some kind of long-term preservation device, and to preserve its functionality.

Unfortunately he didn’t know what was being preserved, but whether because of some flaw of the central installation, or perhaps as design, he couldn’t find out even when he searched for it.

However, since he had this map he knew precisely where it would be, and once Gran and Yuumis came, he could just find out himself.

In truth he wanted to go look now, but a promise was a promise.

Breaking it would just give him a guilty conscious, and though he was aware that he wouldn’t be punished or anything, Gran had shown his good will through his words, and Luru felt somewhat hesistant to betray that good will of his.

That’s why Luru waited.

He would wait until Gran had delivered Rusty and the others to the village, and returned with Yuumis.

-Clunk, Clunk-

In the room packed with mage devices created by the ancient demon race, sat Luru, hugging his knees while he waited for Gran.

While he did, he heard echoes resound through the inside of the ruins.

When he listened carefully, he realised that they were the sound of somebody’s footseps.

And as for whose footsteps they were, that was extremely easy to conclude.

You couldn’t easily find people who would come to places like this, meaning that it was none other than Gran who had left Rusty, Mii and Yuuris at the village.

And truly, a burly swordsman appeared in the room after a short while; it was Gran.

Luru felt a little better having seen Gran head towards him with a hearty smile.

Being alone in a ruin created by his comrades long ago with n.o.body left in in was surprisingly lonely, and painful.

When Gran returned, he felt something warm return inside him.

His blood was finally moving again.

Gran’s smile clouded over a little when he saw Luru’s haggard expression.

“…Oi, you alright?”

He asked.

Luru smiled, and replied,

“I’m fine… It seems that the inside of the ruin is cold, that’s all.”

Now that it was mentioned, Gran surveyed the surroundings once more, and patted his body, seemingly noticing it.

“It really is cold, huh… Well, it’s underground after all. Not cold enough to catch a cold, though.”

“Yeah. …Well then, shall we start exploring?”

“Ahh… It feels kinda weird to have you taking charge, Luru.”

“Isn’t that fine? I’m the one who stopped the Magus Machines… They stopped, right?”

As though thinking back on it, Gran nodded and replied.

“Ohh, you’re right, you’re right. All of the wasp model Magus Machines that attacked the village stopped at once. Good job! They were smashed to pieces on the ground… Yuumis looked a bit like she was gunna cry. She was saying ‘Precious legacies of the past are…!‘ or something like that.”

Spoke Gran, a little jokingly.

It looked like he was picturing Yuumis’ dramatic show of sorrow.

“It isn’t like they can’t be used for research even if they’re broken a little, right?”

“Well, that’s right, but she wanted some that were in a more perfect shape, yanno.”

“I get how she feels, but… it’s too late to do anything about that now, right? If we search the ruins, we might find some more Magus Machines like that. Ahh, speaking of which, where’s Yuumis? Didn’t she come together with you?”

When Luru asked this, Gran frowned and spoke accusingly.

“Oi, oi, did you forget what it was you did?”

“Eh?”

“Didn’t you fiddle with the barrier around the village so that Yuumis couldn’t come out? Yuumis was crying and screaming, ‘I can’t get out! I can’t get out!‘ yanno. Despite that, the kids seemed to go in just fine, though.”

Now that it was mentioned,

‘Come to think of it, something like that did happen, huh.‘

he remembered.

‘But in that case, why wasn’t Gran locked in as well?‘, he wondered.

If he remembered correctly, he set it so that Rusty, Mii, Yuuri, and Gran would be able to enter it.

And so that n.o.body would be able to leave.

But despite that, Gran was here right now.

When Luru asked about this, Gran replied,

“Before I entered the barrier, Yuumis screamed at me. ‘Don’t enter the barrier’, she said. It was a pretty close call.”

“Ahh… Well that makes sense. So Yuumis is still inside the barrier, huh? Couldn’t she have just rewritten the magic sequence again?”

Muttered Luru.

When he did, Gran tilted his head to the side, and said,

“You say it like its easy, but don’t you know just how hard rewriting magic sequences is? It’d be a different story if you had a huge amount of mana, but yanno, if magicians got their magic sequences rewritten by others that easily, they’d be useless. Even a competent magician needs at least a few dozen minutes, yanno.”

“But I thought it’d already been a few dozen minutes.”

“Yuumis’ magic sequence was an original of hers. To begin with it was made so that it’d be hard to rewrite, and since it was overwritten with an even more high level sequence, Yuumis said she didn’t know how to rewrite it anymore. I might be average when it comes to magic sequences, but Yuumis is a first-rate magician, you know? And for her barrier to be…”

Since the barrier Yuumis used was quite high level, Luru thought that with time she would be able to rewrite it again, but it seems that things weren’t so simple.

Perhaps the technique he used was something that was lost over these past millenia.

Since the technique of rewriting was something that required a slightly different mode of thought than simply using magecraft, Luru felt that he could understand how things ended up this way.

“Well, as for Yuumis it’ll be fine if we release the barrier when we get back. Gran, there’s no use just standing here. We can talk while we walk. Let’s move.”

Gran tilted his head at Luru’s words, and voiced his doubts.

“…It’s weird. Are you really seven? It feels like I’m talking to someone older than me.”

In truth, if you included his years as the demon king, Luru was undoubtedly the elder so Gran’s feeling was correct.

But the reality was that Luru was no older than seven years old.

Gran might have felt something like ‘Why is this brat speaking so importantly?’. [Note: In j.a.panese, younger people are typically of lower station, hence use polite speech. But Luru has been speaking as an equal, and his last line was kind of imperative.]

Because of that, Luru obediently apologised.

“Really? My bad. I’ll take care.”[Note: Still not using polite speech]

However the apology itself sounded somewhat wrong.

Gran frowned even more, and then looking like he had given up, said,

“… Like I said… Well, whatever. Let’s go.”

And like that, Luru and Gran began to walk.

The insides of the ruin were surprisingly bright, and not much moisture could be felt in the atmosphere.

The ceiling of the ruin itself glowed softly, and the floor was stable and sound.

While gazing at the equipment in the ruin, Gran let out a voice of admiration.

“This is amazing… I can understand why Yuumis gets so into this stuff now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… This light included, aren’t there a whole bunch of Magus Machines installed here? With this level of technology, succesfully a.n.a.lysing just one of these things would make life a lot more convenient!”

“”You can’t find this stuff in large towns?”

Luru hardly ever left his village and when he did, he had only gone to the neighbouring town at best, so he still hadn’t ever set foor in a large city.

Because of that, he wasn’t well versed in the level of technology in cultural capitals, and thought to ask Gran to find out.

“Well… It’s not like there’s not, but there aren’t many people who could fill up a whole building like this one. Not only that, the mana consumption isn’t a joke and hardly any of them can be used for long periods of time. But it seems this ruin is different. Anyway, thousands of years have pa.s.sed at the least, but they’re functioning even now… I dunno how they’re built, but they’re pretty amazing tools huh…”

From these words, Luru was able to guess that the level of technology circulating in this era was quite primitive.

His father Patrick had a few Magic Tools, but according to his father, the capital had more of them to an extent, but it seemed that they couldn’t ma.s.s produce so many that you’d find them in just any old marketplace.