07-06 Side Story 5: Kaina Village, It’s Been a While
Just now, Jin had come to Kaina Village.
That was because he vaguely reminisced, and vaguely felt the want to try going.
He took the carriage’s Warp Gate first to Hourai Island, and from there to the Warp Gate in the shelter that had been established non the outskirts of Kaina Village.
In Kaina Village too it was night.
The weather had been clear in Delead, but here it was slightly cloudy. A vaguely lukewarm air, typical of a spring night.
“Everyone’s already asleep, huh…”
With no entertainments or pleasures, the night in farmwork-centric Kaina Village was shot. When the sun went down almost all of the families went to sleep.
With the moonlight coming from a rift between the clouds he could somehow see the road. By himself, Jin walked down the nostalgic road.
“Martha-san, Hannah…I wonder if they’re doing okay.”
Quietly, Jin peeked into Martha’s house over the fence. Jin could see Hannah’s room through the isingla.s.s window he had installed.
He wanted to take a look, but after rethinking it doing such a degenerate’s action would be bad, so after walking around the house he really had lingering attachments towards he moved on.
He went to the location of the pump. To the place where the first useful tool Jin had built using Craft Magic was installed.
“It still works perfectly, huh.”
Jin softly moved the pump’s handle. With its durability raised with [Hardening] the pump had barely worn down at all. Jin let go of the handle satisfied.
Next he headed towards the hot spring.
The hot bath made the sound of a free-flowing hot spring even in the middle of the night.
While it had been just a cabin with a tidy shingle roof, the whole building had been reconstructed to be st.u.r.dy. That must’ve been because of how much the villagers appreciated the facility.
Peering inside, Jin found that on the hole he had dug some hot-spring mineral deposits had acc.u.mulated and so he removed them with Craft Magic.
In the sedimentation tank that settled the fresh water and dirtied bath water, mud had piled up so using [Decomposition] and [Cleanup] he made it stay clean.
Jin kept walking around the village. He set out to the public square, where in spite of the gloomy moonlight light pink flowers were in full bloom.
“Kherry blooms, huh. They really are exactly like cherries.”
While he had been in j.a.pan, they had been the flowers he loved the most. Jin stayed like that for a while, gazing up at the Kherries in full bloom.
“Master.”
Jin was brought back to reality by a voice calling out his name. Turning around, in front of Jin was,
“Gen.”
The golem Gen. It looked like he was on midnight patrol.
“How may I help you tonight?”
“Mm, I just wanted to watch the Kherries bloom.”
Even though the other party wasnt’t someone he particulary had to hide things from, Jin felt vaguely embara.s.sed and answered like that.
Then he suddenly realized something.
“Gen, how is Gon doing?”
“Yes, he is similarly going around defending the village.”
When Jin heard that he said,
“Alright, in that case let’s do it in turns. First, Gen, follow me.”
“Yes.”
The thing Jin had realized was that Gen and Gon hadn’t yet received the countermeasures for [Subordination Rewriting Magic]. The same went for the horse golems.
Jin then left Kaina Village posthaste to make sure that the golems there would have countermeasures installed.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Laozi, you’ve gathered the components necessary for [Subordination Rewriting Magic] countermeasure together, right?”
“Yes, My Lord. The countermeasures of all the golems in Hourai Island have been taken care of, and 100 sets of spare parts have been prepared.”
“Alright, I’ll immediately add the countermeasures to this here ‘Gon’. After that, ‘Gen’, then the five horse golems.”
“Understood.”
Jin then installed the Subordination Rewriting Magic countermeasures to Gen with the support of Laozi. At the same time he tuned and optimized the Magi Device, and performed full-body maintenance.
Because of that Gen’s output increased by around eight percent. Comprehensively looking at his current state, he could put out about 30 precent of Reiko’s power.
Furthermore, he added the [Stealth] function, as an improvement to make him able to secretly protect the village.
“Alright Gen, go back to the village and tell Gon to come over here.”
“Yes, master.”
He then gave Gon the same treatement. And then to the horse golems Ein, Zwei, Drei, Quatre, and Cinq too; Jin breathed a sigh of relief.
“In the unlikely event that Kaina Village got attacked it could’ve been disastrous, so.”
By the way, he didn’t add the [Stealth] function to the horses.
Once all the improvements were completed, Jin once more warped to Kaina Village.
Near the shelter on the village outskirts where the Warp Gate was flowed the Elume river.
This time Jin tried going to Elume river.
On the dry riverbed, finally spring’s weeds had begun sprouting. While treading on the riverbed’s sand Jin broke into a nostalgic smile..
“Oh yeah, we played some underwater tag in those depths. If I’m not mistaken, it was around that time I found a Magi Stone mixed in the sand.”
Using that Jin had built a stove, and sold it to the merchant Roland.
“It somehow feels like the distant past, but is it only like three months that have pa.s.sed since then?”
Jin felt that a lot had happened, and Jin reminisced about the things he’d done after he had left Kaina Village.
“I encountered Beana in Blue Land, we made popcorn, built the refrigerator, met with Earl Kuzuma, and Reiko got into a scuffle.”
He remembered the fond memories.
“In Port Rock I made a golem boat, quarreled with a Death Serpent, and began the trip with Reinhardt and the others.”
It was like yesterday, and it was also like in the remote past.
“I built a kite, we caught some thieves, developed Kunlun Island, built Lotte, oh yes, there was also that golem riot.”
Jin’s mental state turned into wanting to mutter a line out of an anime show like ‘Everything about it…is precious’.
Meanwhile, the eastern skies were turning slightly brighter.
Kaina Village was much more to the east than the town of Delead where Jin’s group was currently spending the night, so the sun rose earlier.
“Any time now the early families will get out of bed, huh.”
Jin muttered and began walking towards the shelter where the Warp Gate was.
“I’ll be back.”
Jin shouted out to no one in particular and entered the shelter, and warped to Hourai Island with the Warp Gate installed inside.
＊ ＊ ＊
In Delead, it was still night.
Jin who returned via Hourai Island quietly returned to his room in the inn and slipped into his bed.
Then he would have a short sleep until morning.
Jin didn’t know that his faithful unparalleled Automata Reiko had followed after him all this time.
“Father…Is satisfied now, right?”
Reiko muttered while looking at sleeping Jin’s content face.
Morning was still hours away, and stars were twinkling over the town of Delead.