The small boat made from Furemaru slowly made its way to land.
"Weren't we moving a lot smoother just before?" Tomochika asked, as she rowed with an oar that was also made from Furemaru.
"Indeed," Mokomoko replied, using Enju to row alongside her.
"While it can utilize most things as a source of energy, it is not a perpetual motion machine. It requires some time to charge.
Currently, its energy stores have been exhausted."
"I thought making a boat out of Furemaru would solve most of our problems, but I feel like we're still walking on thin ice here!"
"We can see land, so we're almost there," Yogiri said, looking on.
"And why are you just watching us do the work?"
"One person on each side is enough, isn't it? If I helped too, it would throw off the balance."
"And taking the boy's stamina into account, with him rowing, we wouldn't make it very far."
"I have to say, I think I like my guys to be more reliable!"
"In many ways, he is incredibly reliable, don't you think?"As Mokomoko said that, looking back, Tomochika turned to follow her gaze.
Something enormous was floating in the water behind them.
It was a strange-looking creature, with the body of a shark but arms like a human. There were also plenty of creatures with numerous tentacles, like squid or octopi, floating among the waves.
"Ohhh! It's like a seafood buffet!" Tomochika remarked.
"Even the Dannoura School has little it can do on the open ocean. Without the boy, we would have been consumed long ago."(Mokomoko)
"Isn't this ocean way too dangerous?!"Truthfully, Tomochika didn't even understand just how dangerous this world was.
After all, Yogiri dealt with most issues as soon as they arose, and any arrogant, self-important enemies who appeared in front of them died immediately.
They had defeated numerous powerful foes along the way, but since those villains had all died immediately, Tomochika had no idea how strong they had really been.
So she didn't understand the threat this sea life posed to them either.
"Hmm. While they don't seem to be everywhere, it would still be incredibly reckless for a novice to attempt to cross the ocean. At this rate, I begin to worry about Kouryu's well-being."
"He's a dragon, so he'll be fine, right?"
"No point in worrying about it."
"You two..."
As they spoke, they came up against land. Kouryu had brought them rather close to their destination.
The boat continued forward,
running a ground on the beach.
"I'm glad we didn't run into a cliff or something," Tomochika commented. If they had, they would have had a difficult time making
it out of the water.
"Well, we're okay for now, but the real problem is what to do next."
Their objective was to reach the Empire of Ent, an eastern island country, and take the Philosopher's Stone from the Sage who residedthere.
The cruise ship they had been on had been heading there, but after it sank, they hadn't had a clear idea of where to go.
"For now, let us wait for Furemaru to recharge so we can transform
it into a state that will allow us to carry it," Mokomoko suggested.
It seemed they wouldn't be able to go anywhere for a while.
Thinking that now was her time to shine, Tomochika looked around. Although
they could rely on Yogiri's ability to detect killing intent that was aimed at them, her eyesight was still useful for seeing across long
distances.
There were no people around. A calm, sandy beach stretched out before them, turning to hills a short distance away.
The hills turned then to bare rock, which continued to slope gently upwards, stretching higher for a considerable distance.
"I can't see anything but beach, hills, and the sea."
"It's hard to tell if this place is inhabited, then."
"It doesn't look especially dangerous, but what do you think, Takatou?"
"Hmm. I don't sense any killing intent, so I don't think we're going to suddenly get attacked or anything."
So far, Yogiri's ability to detect killing intent had never been wrong, so that alone was reassuring to hear.
"Hm. I should be able to transform Furemaru a few times now, then we'll be able to carry it out," Mokomoko reported as Tomochika kept
watch around them.
"Can you make an enclosure for me, then? I'm sick of wearing this swimsuit."
"There is no one around. Why don't you just change here?"
"If you don't want me to look, I can just turn around," Yogiri offered.
"No...it's not that I don't trust you, Takatou, but changing in such a wide-open place like this is unsettling."
"Goodness. If you are still embarrassed about simply having your breasts exposed, life will be difficult from here on out," Mokomoko
muttered as she transformed Furemaru into an enclosure for her descendant.
"And where exactly are we going where that's a problem?! Wouldn't it be more of a problem if I wasn't embarrassed?!"
They had changes of clothes in the backpack Yogiri was carrying. It could carry a lot more than it looked like, so all of their belongings
were inside it.
◇ ◇ ◇
After Tomochika and Enju had changed, Mokomoko turned Furemaru back into parts of their outfits.
They were primarily using it to protect Tomochika. The only reason it had been inside Enju earlier
was because Tomochika had been wearing her swimsuit.
"Wasn't it a lot bigger than this?"
"Making it the size of that boat involved stretching
it out long and thin, leaving it hollow. If compressed, it is rather small. It still maintains a measure of strength when spread out like that, but of course it has its limits."
"All right, let's go."Yogiri headed off first, Tomochika and Mokomoko following close
behind him.
With a surprising amount of difficulty, they made it out of the sand and onto the rocky surface of the hills. The slope wasn't very steep, but it was a considerable distance to the top.
"It doesn't look like there's anywhere else we can go, does it?"Yogiri looked around, as if already tired of climbing.
The hill stretched out in both directions, so either way they would end up having to summit it.
After climbing for a while, they finally reached the top.
"It doesn't look like there are any people around here..."An enormous basin was stretched out in front of them. It was mostly comprised of dirt and stone, the rolling landscape blocking their view
of it.
Inside the basin were numerous pits ringed with mountains that looked like craters.
"Hm. I imagine this basin is a crater itself," Mokomoko posited.
"That would make this the edge of it."
"So after a huge meteor hit, a bunch of smaller ones followed it?"
"Not necessarily a meteor. Something with enormous energy like a nuclear explosion could have a similar effect on the landscape."
"Putting aside the speculation, what do we do now? I'm kind of at a loss as to what happens next."Yogiri had hoped they would find a clue about what to do once they reached the top, but with nothing but barren land before them, he
had no idea.
"Doesn't that look sort of like a road?" Tomochika asked, pointing at
the basin. Looking closely, they could see a small line winding around the mountains and craters.
"Hm...it does look like it has been maintained artificially,"
Mokomoko replied. "I doubt such a thing would occur in nature by chance."
"Any idea where it goes?"
"I attempted to check from above, but the shape of the landscape makes it hard to follow."
"I guess we have no choice but to go down ourselves."
They began to descend the slope. The inside of the crater had been gouged out significantly steeper than the outside, so climbing down
took longer than going up.
Once they made it down, the road was obvious. It hadn't been paved, but it had been cleared, and the tracks of something like carriage wheels could be seen running down it.
It appeared to be seeing some use, so there was no doubt there was intelligent life nearby.
"It's nice that we know it's not a deserted island, but which direction do we go in?" Tomochika asked.
Their first destination would be a settlement of some sort, but there was no clue as to which direction such a place lay in.
Both ends of the road disappeared behind the mountains around them.
"There is nothing to do but rely on our intuition... Oh. It appears something is approaching us." Mokomoko turned to her left.
A carriage was barreling down the road towards them, its driver desperately whipping a horse that was all but foaming at the mouth with the exertion of it.
"What is that?!"
"Looks like they're chasing him," Yogiri mused. A number of people on horses were following the carriage at a rapid pace.
"Are they bandits or something? We haven't had an otherworld fantasy development like this before, have we?"
"Is this fantasy?! I'm pretty sure you could see something like this only a hundred years ago back home!"
There were five pursuers. They were men with hair cut into mohawks, wielding axes and wearing spiked shoulder guards.
They chased the carriage, letting out wild cries as they ran.
"That's a pretty shabby looking carriage," Yogiri said.
"If this was an actual otherworld fantasy, they'd be royalty or something, but the chances of that don't look so good."
"You have a pretty biased view of other worlds, don't you? But more importantly, what are we going to do about it?!"
Yogiri gave her a confused look."Do we have to do anything?"
"Huh? Shouldn't we help someone if they're being chased by bandits?"
"We don't know that they're bandits, so we can't say which of them is in the wrong."
"Okay, come on! They're hooting and hollering and waving axes around!"
"That's not enough to prove they're bad people. Mohawks could just be a cultural hairstyle."
"I mean, that's true, but..." Even if this was a bandit-related event, there was always the possibility that the carriage driver was the
thief, and the riders pursuing him were the victims.
It was true that they couldn't pass judgment at a glance.
But it still seemed like something bad was happening, so it would gnaw at her conscience to do nothing.
As Tomochika considered their options, the carriage flew past them.
Ignoring the three of them, the pursuers continued after it.
Although there was nothing much they could do at that point, Tomochika turned to watch.
Someone had appeared on the road in front of the carriage: a young girl holding two shields.
She was running straight towards the
charging vehicle, with no apparent intention of dodging.
Tomochika thought she might have intended to jump aside at the last second, but the girl just lifted her shields in front of her. It seemed like she was planning on blocking the carriage with them.
She was rather small, and the shields weren't that large.
Common sense would say that trying to stop a runaway carriage in such a way was ridiculous, but her face was brimming with confidence.
"Die, Yogiri Takatou!" the girl shouted as she struck the carriage, sending the whole thing flying up into the air.
Having deflected the vehicle, she continued through to strike the riders chasing it before coming to a stop.
The carriage had made it a fair distance away from the three of them, but it landed with a loud
crash in front of them.
"Things are happening so suddenly, I can't follow what's going on!"
"It sounded like she shouted my name."
"Perhaps there is no need to confirm this, but as you might imagine, they have all perished," Mokomoko observed.
The driver of the carriage and his pursuers had been ordinary humans, so they hadn't been able to survive the fall from such a
height.
"Now what?" Tomochika asked.
"Should we make a grave for them?"
"That's the first sensible thing you've said when confronted with dead bodies yet!"
"I wouldn't bother burying someone I had killed myself, but these people are unrelated to us."
"Are they really, though? She did call out your name as she struck them," Mokomoko said.
The three of them turned to look at the girl. She was jumping for joy, as if she had finally accomplished something.
"We probably shouldn't get involved with her..."Tomochika warned the others.
"Let's go back in the other direction," Yogiri agreed.
They began walking towards where the carriage had come from.
"What?! The Yogiri Takatou Signal hasn't disappeared yet!"
they heard a voice call out from behind them. "Is he inside the carriage?"
"Takatou..."
"Yeah, it looks like we might be getting involved
after all."
As they spoke, they continued walking, trying to get as far from the girl as possible.
"The carriage only has luggage inside...which means... Hey, you people!" There was no one else there except for their group, so there was no doubt she was talking to them.
"She's talking to us, by the way."
"If we ignore her, she'll probably charge us, right?" Yogiri sighed.
"What is it?"He turned to talk to her, and Tomochika followed suit.
The girl came up to stand in front of them immediately. She was rather small.
Her appearance suggested she was just a girl from a simple rural village, but the two shields she carried stood out.
They seemed to be the only thing like armor she had on her, and she had no weapons at all.
"Are you Yogiri Takatou?!"
He hesitated for a moment before answering, as if deciding whether to tell the truth or not. "Yes. What do you want?"
"Shouldn't a villain like you be riding a runaway carriage and laughing maniacally or something?! What were you thinking, walking around pretending to be an ordinary person?!"
"You don't see people that angry at you for doing nothing very often, do you?" Tomochika quipped.
"I don't know what to say," Yogiri shrugged. "I feel like you're the villain here. It's pretty cruel of you to kill a whole bunch of people because you mistook them for me."
"W-Well..." When Yogiri pointed that out, the girl seemed to panic somewhat. "I-I'm doing it for justice, so..."
"That's the best you can come up with?" demanded Tomochika.
"For the sake of 'justice,' you just kill unrelated people who were unprepared for a fight?"
"Urrghh...God, help me!"
Pushed back into a corner, the young girl suddenly dropped to her knees and began praying. It was hard to believe that praying to God like that would be of any use, but after a short time, she climbed
back to her feet with a smile.
"It's okay! I've been given a new power! If I make a mistake, I can try again! Shield Resurrection!"
She lifted both of her shields above her head. They began to glow, shedding light on everything around them.
The fact that Yogiri wasn't reacting must have meant that it wasn't an attack. After a short while, the fallen men began to move.
"Did she just bring them back to life?!"
"She did say 'resurrection,' so probably."
The revived men sat there in a daze for a few moments but soon got a hold of themselves.
The man from the carriage immediately ran
away, while his mohawked pursuers began searching through his now discarded vehicle.
While they didn't quite understand what was
going on, it seemed the conflict was revolving around their cargo.
"So? Now there's no problem, right?"
"I'm not sure that's the case, but anyway, who are you?"
"I am Vivian, apostle of Malnarilna! My god has granted me these powers and bestowed upon me a great mission: to rid the world of your wickedness, Yogiri Takatou!" Vivian declared, thrusting a shield forward to point at him.