Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 23 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3:

Aluce, City of the Divine Continent

SO THERE we were.

As we got our bearings after stepping out of the box, a wide, open plain spread out before us. Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was the thin air, but there wasn’t so much as a single tree growing. The ground was covered in nothing but short grass and shrubbery.

Well, we were three thousand meters above sea level. Our breaths turned white in the chill. Fortunately, there wasn’t any snow, and the land was smooth and flat. It wouldn’t be too hard to travel. It was looking like we’d make good time and reach Aluce within a day.

For now, though, the moon was high in the sky. The stars twinkled brightly down upon us, possibly because we were that much closer to them. The night hid plenty of monsters, and it was easy to get lost in the dark.

For now, we set up camp.

We decided to eat the goats we’d hunted earlier. We made a campfire, heated up some water in a pot I made with earth magic, and tossed in some goat bones to make the stock. We added the meat once the water was boiling as well as some spices we brought along. Voilà, goat soup.

It was Geese who taught me how to cook monsters like this. Now he was my enemy. You never know where life might take you.

Anyway, it was cold out, so I moved the box onto the continent’s shelf. We’d all huddle together and sleep inside of it. There wasn’t any firewood lying around, but I’d brought a night’s worth of our own stock just in case. We moved the campfire into the box, crafted a chimney in the roof, and slept in a warmed room.

The adults here had done enough traveling to not mind a little cold, but we had to consider Sylphie’s body and Sieg. Sieg’s cheeks were bright red, but it didn’t seem like he had a fever. He was doing fine. Just as Orsted’d said, his body was built tough. Still, infants could easily get sick, so I had to keep an eye out.

While the box we were in was sturdy, there was always the possibility that some boar-like monster could charge at us from across the plain and knock the whole thing clean off the cliff. We took shifts standing guard one at a time while the other three slept.

Snuggling up with the ladies caused my little lad (the one not named Sieg or Arus) to spring wide awake, but I controlled myself. Sorry, Sieg, a new baby brother or sister will have to wait a while.

***

The next day, we trekked onward.

The city of Aluce was northeast of our current location, with nothing but wide, empty plains in between. It didn’t look like there was a landmark in sight…at first.

Long ago, a hero came to this land and crossed the Divine Continent. In the era of the Laplace War, he climbed to the Divine Continent from the Demon Continent side, and then obtained a hidden skill that would prove invaluable to their victory. In case he met with an untimely demise, the hero left landmarks showing the path toward the technique he obtained.

Incidentally, that hero went by the name of “Perugius.”

Given that the land here had short grass and few trees, the markers stood out pretty blatantly. All we had to do was glance around once morning came, and what do you know? One was right over there.

As we approached, we found that the landmarks were pillars. They were about a meter and a half tall, likely made from earth magic. They were just thick enough for you to wrap your arms around. The upper part of the pillar was scuffed and worn down by time. If you took a cross section, you could see that the pillar wasn’t cylindrical, but instead shaped like a drop. The tapered tip of that drop pointed toward the city.

So it was written in The Legend of Perugius. This landmark doubtless only made sense to the people who read that book. As I’d expect from a trial given by Perugius himself, his book held plenty of hints. Not that I thought he wrote the thing himself.

A few hours passed as we traveled.

Maybe it was because we were on a plain and not a highway, but there were a lot of monsters around. They mostly fell into one of three types: the Winged Goats that first appeared at around two thousand meters up, the Heaven’s Mustelas that looked like four-meter-long weasels, and the giant, bipedal birds of prey known as Nidhogg Ostriches. There didn’t seem to be many amphibian or insect monsters, assumedly because it was cold all year round up here. In terms of strength, I’d put them on the same level as the monsters in the northern part of the Central Continent. They weren’t as weak as those found near Asura Kingdom or Millis, but they also weren’t as strong as those on the Demon Continent or the Begaritt Continent. The only monsters that made flocks numbering in the double digits were the Winged Goats, with the Heaven’s Mustelas and Nidhogg Ostriches roaming either alone or in the occasional pair.

I’d put the Winged Goats at D rank, and the other two in the C range. They were all capable of flight, however, so I’d have to bump them up a rank if they appeared in the Central Continent. People have a psychological weakness against things that can fly.

For adventurers like us, it goes without saying they posed almost no threat. Eris diverted the Winged Goats’ attention while Roxy hung back to launch a high-rank spell to wipe them out. Eris could finish the other two kinds by herself without thinking about it. They couldn’t reach me, much less Sieg or Sylphie. Ah, I was so grateful to the man of the house for protecting us!

We kept our guard up anyhow. The Divine Continent for sure held greater challenges than that. Even if we didn’t pass through them on our trip, the forests, mountains, or at minimum the labyrinths would have stronger monsters than these.

The Divine Continent labyrinth known as Hell housed hordes of the world’s nastiest monsters, with its innermost sanctum guarded by a vicious slime called Vita. The mention of a slime reminded me of the Demon King one back in the Library Labyrinth. According to Orsted, this one was on another level. We didn’t want to go near it.

I wasn’t going to breathe a word of this to Eris. She’d want to go if she knew. Or, wait—Eris was a mature adult, now. She was far more logical and accommodating than she was in her spoiled princess days. She might want to go deep down, but she wouldn’t demand it. Right?

I overheard them broach the subject…just small talk.

“Come to think of it,” Eris piped up, “the Divine Continent has a labyrinth called Hell, right?”

“It does,” said Roxy. “I hear it’s quite dangerous. It’s one of the Three Great Dungeons, in fact.”

“I wish I could go.”

“Let’s see… I think with our current members, we could get pretty far in. Rudy doesn’t like labyrinths too much, though. He lost Paul in one, after all…”

“Oh, right…”

Roxy shut her down for me.

“What about you, Sylphie?”

“Hm?”

I turned my head to see that Eris tossed the question to Sylphie, who was playing with the baby in the carrier on my back.

“Are you into labyrinths at all?”

“Hmm… I suppose not. My children are more important to me right now.”

Sylphie reached a hand out and stroked Sieg’s head as she answered. Her tone was nonchalant. It sounded like her mental health was starting to recover. 

No, that was a short-sighted way of thinking. I couldn’t assume from the surface. I needed to rebuild her trust. Back when Paul had the affair that got Lilia pregnant, it took him forever to regain Zenith’s trust. There was once a time when I didn’t understand why Zenith stayed angry for so long, or why she didn’t just forgive him. Now, I understood; it was because Paul only reacted to what he saw on the surface, and only groveled until he got what he wanted.

I wasn’t supposed to be looking for a smile. I had to do everything in my power to regain her trust. It wasn’t going to get done in a day, but no matter how long it took, I had to show with my actions that I loved not just Sylphie, but my children as well.

Thinking about how, exactly, to do that, well…that was the hard part. I’d have to seize any opportunities as I thought of them.

With that on my mind, we continued our journey.

***

It was evening when we saw the city.

“Is that Aluce?”

“It seems kind of…humble.”

Roxy wasn’t kidding. All we saw across the plain was a series of houses built from rock, soil, and bone, all surrounded by a rather low fence. There were no fortified ramparts—a rarity for towns in this world. But maybe they had the right idea. A wall of any height wouldn’t do much to stop monsters that could fly. Still, was it wise to have no line of defense for your city?

I had my doubts as I approached the fence, but as I did… How to describe it? I felt as though a film had been placed over the town. It was like looking at the town through a sheet of glass.

“Looks like a barrier. A big one, at that.”

Upon hearing Roxy’s words, my understanding finally caught up with how the town was actually protected. Of course. There was no way it’d be left completely defenseless.

“Think they’ll let us in?” Sylphie asked.

“Hard to say,” I answered, approaching the barrier. “Orsted didn’t say anything about this.”

Then again, not many of my acquaintances knew much about the skyfolk to begin with. You didn’t see skyfolk on other continents, so I had no idea what they were like. Were they exclusionary, or were they friendly toward other races?

Sylvaril was pretty much the only skyfolk I’d met, and given that she didn’t seem to regard me with much favor, that colored my assumptions. On the other hand, she was plenty lenient with people Perugius held in high regard, like Zanoba. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

Sylvaril’s personality, that is. Not skyfolk as a whole.

Anyway, if nobody thought to warn me beforehand, then there surely wasn’t any danger. None of the “suddenly getting attacked” variety, at any rate.

We came to an edge of the barrier alongside a fenced portion of the town. Barriers in this world typically acted like walls, cordoning off a specified area. That said, barriers could act entirely differently on the Divine Continent. Like, maybe they would deliver an electric shock on contact that fried you to a crisp…

“This one’s pretty sturdy. I wonder if I could cut it.”

Eris, meanwhile, was knocking on the barrier.

“Wait, Eris! Be careful about touching that! What if that thing zaps you?!”

“Huh?! I-I know that…”

A shudder ran down Eris’s spine. Talk about reckless, coming to who-knows-where and putting her hands all over who-knows-what. 

“So, what do we do?”

“That’s…a good question.”

If we raised our voices from outside the barrier, would it reach anyone inside the town? From what we could see, the inside of the fence was just farmland.

Hold on, did skyfolk even make farms? Well, I guess they did. It’s not like people with wings didn’t need to eat. Even that telepathic race that lived deep in the Demon Continent still farmed. Farming is key to life.

Never mind agriculture right now—how were we supposed to get in? My gut feeling would be to walk around the fence until we saw something that looked like an entrance, but there was no gap as far as I could see. There was nothing that seemed like a road either, so no clues there.

Actually, did a race of people who could fly even have the concept of making gaps like a gate to serve as an entrance? If you didn’t walk on the ground, you wouldn’t need to make roads. Did that mean we should have been looking for an entrance in the sky? I didn’t prepare a way for us to fly… Hmm. Destroying the barrier was starting to look like a better idea. We’d repair it later, of course, but we wouldn’t get anywhere until we got in.

“All right, let’s break it.”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“Actually, Eris, I was thinking of using my Stone Cannon to—”

“Sorry to cut in,” said Roxy, who was looking through the barrier. “But it looks like we have company.”

We followed her gaze to see birds flying toward us from within the town. Even as far off in the distance as they were, I could tell they were pretty large. Probably about the size of people… Wait. Those were people. People with wings. Skyfolk.

“Did they get suspicious because we knocked on their barrier?” Sylphie asked.

She might have been right. The best response to monsters appearing outside of your city was to exterminate them, even if they were still outside of a barrier.

Well, whatever the case, first impressions were important. Time to brush off those customer service skills that work had been drilling into me.

“…”

The skyfolk descended upon us with no sound beyond the flaps of their wings. There were three of them. They wore simple robes of…well, it sounds strange to describe them as bird pelts, but something along those lines. They held spears in their hands. That was a bit unusual; the only race I’d seen use spears were the Superd.

They eyed us with suspicion. I couldn’t blame them. Humans pretty much never climbed the cliff to get up here. I, on the other hand, was beaming. I welcomed them with the ol’ Rudeus Smile.

“Ahem, do excuse us. I am Rudeus Greyrat. I came because Lord Perugius demanded that I have my child baptized here. Would you perhaps be acquainted with him?”

“…”

I opened by speaking in Human Tongue, but they responded in a language that I didn’t understand. I looked to my wives for help, while the skyfolk speaker looked to his two companions.

“Yes, that’s Sky God Tongue,” said Roxy. “What should we do?”

That made sense. The Divine Continent’s default language was Sky God Tongue. Crap, I’m completely ignorant…is something that would have tripped up the old Rudeus. But now, I was Orsted’s subordinate. I was hardly unprepared for a little obstacle like this.

“Don’t worry, I came prepared.”

I simply spoke in Human Tongue to start us talking. Even if my words couldn’t get across, my intention to converse would. Our interaction should have quickly communicated that we had no hostility.

“Ahem.”

I cleared my throat. While I had certainly prepared, I didn’t quite have the time to study the nuances of Sky God Tongue. This called for a signboard. I took out the bundle of paper from within my jacket, flipped to a specific page, and showed it to our receptionists. On it was a transcription of what I’d just said in Sky God Tongue. All that was left was to trust in their literacy skills…

“!!!”

The skyfolks’ reaction was dramatic. They immediately pulled up a stake from in front of the fence, and then spread their arms and wings to welcome us inside.

We entered the Divine Continent city of Aluce.

***

The city of Aluce was a bit plainer than I expected. The houses were indeed crafted from bone, rock, soil, and hay. Many of the buildings topped out at three or four stories. If I had to pick one thing that was particularly unusual, it was that I couldn’t see any staircases. I guess people here didn’t need them when they could fly.

The skyfolk tended to the farmland dressed in bird feather pelts fashioned into jackets. The most startling difference here was that the people had wings, so they took flight even when moving short distances. A few had been flying in circles above us to get a good look at their new visitors since our arrival.

Other than that, it was the sort of Podunk farming village you’d find anywhere. Pretty similar to Buena Village, I guess.

I was expecting a bit more, you know, Roman-ish architecture, or maybe something a bit more angelic or a Heaven-ish vibe…but hey, the skyfolk were people who had wings. No more, no less. Aluce was probably a backwoods settlement on the edge of the continent, so it checked out.

There was no lodging here, and nobody spoke Human Tongue. That said, there was one word we could both understand: “Perugius.” Given how readily they welcomed us, these people must have held a deep gratitude toward the man.

We were led to some sort of meeting place. They brought us food, while a guy who resembled a village elder talked about something with a smile. Then he broke out the alcohol.

One thing that I found a bit strange: all the locals wanted to touch Sieg’s feet. I was suspicious early on, but the village elder started the trend. The locals followed one after another, and I accepted them without turning them away. He was the baby that came for Perugius’s trial, so maybe they thought he had some good luck that would rub off on them.

I might have felt a bit unnerved by such lavish treatment under normal circumstances, but they seemed to have good intentions, so I accepted their welcome at face value and lodged for the night at the gathering hall.

That evening, after putting Sieg to sleep, I talked a bit with Sylphie.

“Turns out this place is pretty normal,” said Sylphie.

“Yeah. I expected some kind of uncharted natural wonder since it’s called the ‘Divine Continent,’ but everyone living here is just a regular person. Outside of the flying thing.”

“I’ve never left the Central Continent. Are the others normal, too?”

Hearing that reminded me of the wild splendor of the Demon Continent. The northwestern edge of Biegoya. The residents there looked differently, talked differently, and lived in houses unlike anywhere else’s. Outside of that, yeah, they were pretty much the same.

“Yeah, I guess they are. Each place has some slightly different customs, though.”

“Ranoa and Asura have some differences there, yeah…”

Sylphie went quiet after saying that. Her face was tense, as though she was deep in thought. She didn’t look depressed.

“Is something the matter?”

“I was just thinking that nobody treated Sieg weirdly.”

“Ah, yeah, they didn’t.”

The skyfolk of the Divine Continent didn’t participate in the Laplace War. Their isolation on the Divine Continent allowed them to be the one race to escape Laplace’s invasion. Of course they wouldn’t fear the Superd. That was why the warrior people of the village still used spears, and why they didn’t show any reaction to Sieg’s or Roxy’s hair colors.

According to Orsted, long ago…as in, over four thousand years ago during the time of the second Human-Demon War, they despised demons. No matter how long-lived your race is, though, four thousand years is a lot of time. Generations and generations. That hatred must have withered away.

Wait… No, it was possible that hearing the word Perugius had made them careful not to show overt hostility.

“If only everyone could be like them,” said Sylphie. I saw her lips draw into a smile that looked almost forced.