Chapter 119
We stayed overnight in the post town at the mountain pass.
After we all ate, we grilled and ate the lesser dragon's intestines as offal.
They were exceptionally delicious.
With nothing to do after the meal, I ended up playing mahjong with Akira.
Since there happened to be another Japanese person here, I had wanted to try doing something we could enjoy as Japanese people together—and Akira seemed to like mahjong too, so there shouldn't be a problem.
"Nyaa."
Bell came over to my feet and rubbed herself against my shins.
While stroking her back, I searched Shangri-La for mahjong tiles—and found a promising set for 8,000 yen.
"Click."
A pink box fell from the air. When I opened it, mahjong tiles appeared inside.
"What the hell—K○tty-chan mahjong tiles?! As expected of K○tty-chan, she doesn't care what jobs she takes. She's seriously hardcore."
Akira seemed to love them and was laughing uproariously. He was laughing, but I thought the design was pretty stylish too...
"Pretty good design, right?"
"But how can something like this even come out of your Item Box? What exactly is going on with your ability, Kenichi?"
"Don't ask me. Go ask the god who gave me this ability—or whatever he was."
"If you could produce anything and sell it all over this world, you'd become its ruler in no time."
"You need to pay a price to create things. If you used gold coins as the price, all the gold coins would disappear from this world and the economy would collapse, you know?"
"...Ah, I see. You're right."
Akira had apparently attended university, so he should have understood reasoning this simple.
"You said you took a leave of absence from university to travel around the world, but did you graduate?"
"No. I ended up dropping out."
"What a waste of money—you had your parents pay for it, right?"
"No, I used the life insurance money from my father's death, haha."
The conversation had wandered into dangerous territory, so I decided to stop there.
I bought a mahjong mat as well. If we were playing four-player mahjong, I could have bought an automatic mahjong table instead.
I brought out another table and spread the mahjong mat over it.
"So... how do you play two-man mahjong?"
Two-man mahjong uses only two suits—for example, characters and bamboo—but includes all the honor tiles and terminal tiles.
"Ohh~"
"North becomes a dora. When you draw one, discard it and draw a tile from the dead wall."
"Ah! I learned three-man mahjong at a ranch in Hokkaido, and it worked like that too."
You could also use North tiles in your hand. For example, when going for Little Four Winds, you could use North as a concealed triplet.
"You start with 60,000 points, and mangan is the minimum hand."
"Sounds good—so how much is one point worth?"
Akira brought up gambling as naturally as breathing.
"Are we betting?"
"Of course! How about 1,000 points for 1,000 yen? Thirty thousand yen if you bust."
"Just so you know, with these rules, triple busts, four busts, and even five busts are easy."
"Seriously? Haha."
Well, I had no intention of playing without betting, either.
Then we shuffled the tiles with a clatter and stacked them into walls. Anemone came over to watch.
"Whoa, pretty stones."
Anemone was fascinated by the beautiful patterns on the mahjong tiles. They were resin, not stone, though... I got the first win.
"Yes! Tsumo! Pure flush, pure straight, pinfu, two dora, North North. Hmm... that's a counted yakuman."
"Seriously? Right away?!"
"Since I'm the dealer, that's 48,000 points."
In two-man mahjong, Ron and Tsumo score the same number of points.
"Told you, didn't I?"
"All right! Next game!"
Akira won the next hand.
"Yes! North!"
"Oh, wait—that's Ron. You can win with chankan, right?"
"Huh?"
Akira's hand was Kokushi Musou, waiting on North.
"A yakuman?"
"Thirty-two thousand points. This is pretty interesting."
Once we were both into it, we continued trading massive hands. Still, I felt like I was drawing unusually well.
No, I was drawing far too well. Had I always been this lucky...?
"Hey, Akira?"
"Hm?"
"Did your luck improve after receiving the Emperor's blessing?"
"Yeah, it did. I think it probably went up."
"I knew it. My mahjong draws are completely abnormal."
"Haha, same here. I hadn't done much gambling since coming to this world, so I couldn't tell for sure—but if two Blessed people play against each other, maybe the game can never be decided..."
"Maybe so..."
In the end, we played through the North round, and I finished 10,000 points ahead. At 1,000 yen per 1,000 points, that put me up 10,000 yen.
"Here, one Imperial silver coin."
Akira took a silver coin from his Item Box and placed it on the mat.
Apparently, ten Imperial silver coins made one gold coin, worth 100,000 yen—easy enough to understand.
I had happened to come out ahead this time, but I felt that the more often we played, the closer our results would get to even.
Perhaps because he was in a good mood, Akira took another canned beer from his Item Box.
"Want me to chill it?"
"If you can, I'd appreciate it."
I had Anemone chill Akira's beer—but when he opened the can and tried to drink it...
"Huh? Nothing's coming out. It's frozen solid inside..."
"Ah... Maybe the can is aluminum, so the magic worked too well?"
"...I see. That could be it."
We poured the beer into a glass first, then had Anemone chill it.
"Gulp, gulp, gulp! Ahh! Beer tastes so much better cold, damn it! I never thought I'd be able to drink beer again!"
He sounded just like an old man, but he was an old man, so there was nothing to be done.
"This world only has ale, after all."
"Well, ale would probably taste good if it were brewed properly. But the ale in this world is frankly awful!"
Seeing Akira's beer, Nyamena quietly came over.
"Um, boss... That stuff that looks like ale seems pretty good..."
"Hmm? Nyamena, want to try some? You were drinking alcohol while eating meat earlier—can you handle it?"
"I was too busy eating to drink very much."
When I pulled Nyamena close, her fur smelled like grilled meat.
"Haha, Nyamena—your fur smells like something delicious."
"Really?"
She sniffed at the fur on her own arm.
"If you smell like that, you'd be found right away even if you hid."
"That's bad..."
Come to think of it, did Shangri-La sell ale? I searched, and found something called pale ale.
I didn't know much about alcohol, so I wasn't sure, but it was apparently ale. I clicked buy.
A blue can labeled Premium fell from the air, but since it was aluminum, the magic would work too well if we left it as it was.
Just like Akira, I poured it into a mug and had Anemone chill it with magic.
I would have to manage the aluminum cans carefully.
"Ohh, so this is ale?! Why is it so foamy?! It's not magic, is it?"
"Go ahead and try it."
"Gulp, gulp, gulp! What the hell?! This is too delicious! You call this ale?!"
"Is it really that good, nya? Let me try some, nya."
But when Myaree put her lips to the mug, she started making a fuss.
"It's bitter, nya! It doesn't taste good at all, nya!"
"Kurosuke, you don't understand how delicious this is... Ah, what was all the ale I've been drinking until now?"
After drinking ale from my original world, Nyamena wore an ecstatic expression.
Primula came over to where Akira and I were. Apparently, she had stopped playing backgammon.
Anemone, who had been fiddling with the mahjong tiles on the table, seemed to have become interested in mahjong.
"Kenichi! I want to learn this game too."
"This? It's pretty difficult, you know?"
"Yes!"
After hearing that, Primula raised her hand as well.
"Then I'll learn it too. Perhaps we could sell it."
She was certainly right that it would be fun once you learned it—but the rules were complicated.
"Oh? Your Item Box contains quite a variety of gaming equipment, doesn't it, Kenichi?"
The princess was looking at the mahjong tiles with interest too.
I understood that the tiles were unusual, but since they used kanji, I doubted she could make any sense of them.
To start with, we played several practice games with everyone's hands left face-up.
Both Anemone and Primula were intelligent, so they learned most of the rules quickly. They seemed to regard the kanji as nothing more than patterns.
"Oh, look—a bad adult is teaching children how to gamble, nya."
"I'm not a child!"
Anemone got angry, but without betting, it was just an ordinary game. Once you bet, even playing cards or dice became gambling.
"Myaree, what kind of gambling do the beastfolk men play? Something difficult would be impossible for them, right?"
"They play a game where you guess whether the dice total will be high or low, nya."
Apparently, they rolled dice and guessed whether the next result would be high or low.
Would that really count as gambling? Once money was involved, there ought to be some calculation of the payouts.
I wondered whether the beastfolk, who couldn't do the math, were being cheated.
"The men who play that game even though they always lose are idiots, nya."
That was harsh, but Myaree might have been right. Still, gambling was something you knew was foolish but couldn't stop doing.
Especially in this world, where there was no entertainment. Drink, gamble, and buy women—that was the basic lifestyle.
While teaching Anemone and Primula mahjong, we ended up staying up far too late.
Why did I have to come all the way to another world to teach people mahjong?
Contrary to my feelings, Primula seemed extremely interested and was already considering whether she could turn it into a game to sell.
She had also said she would sell backgammon through the Marlowe Trading Company. She certainly was enthusiastic about business.
"Oh, right, Kenichi. What kind of horse won the Japan Derby?"
"When I was in Japan? The last horse to win was My Carnelian."
"What sire line was it from?"
"It was a foal of Deep Driver."
"Sunday bloodline... It really doesn't seem to be weakening."
"With the bloodline becoming so concentrated, you'd think it would start to decline, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of that."
Thoroughbreds are produced using stallions.
If a foal by a stallion named A performs well, every farm rushes to breed its mares with A. A popular stallion sires over a hundred foals a year, meaning a hundred new siblings are born every year.
If one of his sons wins a major race, that son becomes a stallion too and begins breeding, causing the number of descendants of A to increase rapidly—but...
Eventually, the bloodline of A's descendants stops performing altogether—the so-called limit of the bloodline.
After inbreeding, bloodlines decline. You could say exactly the same thing was happening to this kingdom's royal family.
"It might be interesting to hold horse races in this world too."
"With the horses in this world, wouldn't it have to be ban'ei racing?"
Ban'ei racing is a race in which horses pull sleds loaded with heavy weights.
Indeed, horses as powerful as the heavy tanks of this world would be perfect for ban'ei racing.
------◇◇◇------
The morning after our overnight stay in the post town at the mountain pass.
The house was full of beds for the women, but somehow we had managed to sleep.
There had once been a large number of women living in my house after I rescued them from Shaga's place. I even had bunk beds. Where there's a will, there's a way.
The female beastfolk slept with us inside the large tent.
Since our numbers had increased, we took a day off from bathing. Besides, we could reach the royal capital in another day.
The princess suggested that we use the baths at the castle. I intended to take her up on that offer.
While Anemone and I prepared breakfast, Primula woke up as well.
With more people to feed, Anemone wouldn't have been able to bake enough bread in time.
I decided to buy bread from Shangri-La.
We had made curry the previous day, but apparently there was some soup stock left over from before the curry roux had been added, so we would use that for soup.
I bought a large quantity of eggs from Shangri-La and boiled them.
No matter how many we made, they disappeared in an instant. They were easy to prepare, nutritious, and delicious.
Even boiled eggs like these were luxury cuisine in this world.
I had Akira, who had woken up, provide mayonnaise for the eggs.
"Here you go."
While Akira was providing the mayonnaise, Nyamena and Myaree woke up as well.
"Boss Akira, how can something like that come out of your body? What is going on inside you?"
Nyamena stared intently at the mayonnaise that had appeared.
"How should I know?! It doesn't come out of my body or anything!"
Well, of course not. If it came from inside his body, he couldn't produce a whole swimming pool's worth.
Once breakfast was ready, the princess, Reiran-san, and the others woke up too. I filled plastic containers from my Item Box with water and had them wash their faces.
The female knight, who had shut herself inside the house yesterday, seemed to be back to normal.
Seeing that, Akira wore an expression that seemed to say, "Told you so, right?"
So this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence for them?
While everyone ate breakfast, Mairen-san went to check on the injured man with the mayor.
The maids ate with us too—or rather, they never actually ate.
Once we—or rather, the princess—finished eating, they always hurriedly ate their own meals.
After breakfast, we went to see the injured man we had brought in the previous day.
According to Mairen-san, he was sleeping on the second floor of the inn.
If he still hadn't regained consciousness, we would leave immediately. We couldn't wait around.
On the way to the inn, several prostitutes in frilly dresses hugged me.
They took turns hugging me and running their hands all over my body.
"Oh, aren't you the boss from the other day?" "Do that fun thing for us again."
"Hey, after I check on the injured man, I have to leave for the royal capital immediately."
"What? Can't you stay just a little while?"
"Besides, I've learned how to control my strength, so just hugging me won't make you feel good anymore."
"...It's true..."
The women looked at one another.
After shaking off the prostitutes, I went up to the second floor of the inn. The man I had rescued was awake in bed.
"Good morning. I'm the mage who rescued and treated you yesterday."
The man tried to sit up, but he still seemed unable to move his body freely.
"You can stay as you are."
"...Thank you... I can't believe I'm still alive..."
He had fallen off a cliff and hovered at death's door. Unless he was from my original world, he probably couldn't believe it in this world.
"I also retrieved your undamaged luggage and left it with the mayor here."
"You retrieved my luggage too?"
"Yes—but I'm afraid I'll have to charge you for the treatment. One gold coin, or 200,000 yen."
I had saved his life, healed his near-fatal injuries to a reasonable degree, and retrieved his luggage. That was an extremely generous price.
"Are you really all right with that amount?"
"Yes. I didn't save you to make money. Besides, it was all done at Her Highness's command."
"What? At Her Highness's command?"
"Her Highness was traveling with us in our vehicles. I only rescued you because she ordered me to."
It wasn't true, but things would go more smoothly if we let him believe that.
"What compassion. Please express my heartfelt gratitude to Her Highness."
"Very well. I'll be sure to tell her."
I took one gold coin from the wallet he had kept on his person at all times.
That completed the job.
I returned to the others and began preparing to leave.
"Akira, here's one gold coin for the treatment."
"I didn't really need it..."
"You can't say that."
I took a gold coin from my wallet for Anemone.
"Anemone, here's one gold coin for you too."
"I don't need it."
"Then I'll put it in the Anemone section of my Item Box."
"Okay."
I stored the tables and other equipment, then stored the house and brought out the two vehicles.
"Akira, fill the tanks again."
"Sure!"
I didn't think it was necessary, but it was better to be safe. If some trouble left us stranded without fuel, it would be no laughing matter.
While we were preparing the vehicles, the mayor and several others came over.
"Your Highness—we were unable to offer you any hospitality..."
"Don't worry about it! I did not come here to play. This was official business!"
"Yes, Your Highness!"
Leaving the townspeople prostrate behind us, we all climbed into the vehicles and checked that everyone was present by pointing at each person.
The princess sat beside me—in the passenger seat. She took the seat beside me as though it were only natural, which seemed to annoy Anemone... But the higher-ranking person took precedence.
Normally, she was someone so far above me that I wouldn't even have been able to speak to her.
"Point-and-call check! One, two, three... Bell's here too. All right, we're off for the royal capital! Akira, is everything all right on your end?"
I picked up the handheld microphone and contacted the vehicle behind us.
'Yeah! We're fine! Leave it to me!'
"On the descent, I don't think we'll have to worry about a carriage crashing into us."
'Then that's good. What about monsters around here?'
"There were wyverns, but we took care of them."
'Ahh, got it. So this is where you did it.'
The two vehicles set off in a line and descended the mountain pass. On the way down, the engine brakes proved useful.
If we kept the brakes applied the whole time, they would heat up and suffer brake fade or vapor lock.
The two vehicles continued down the winding road and reached the foot of the pass without incident shortly after noon.
We had a light lunch there, then set out again immediately. We were aiming to reach the royal capital today.
"From here on, it's just a long stretch of level road. We should reach the royal capital before dark."
'Hahaha. There's no way a horse-drawn carriage could pull off something like this.'
Since the road was level, we overtook one horse-drawn carriage after another and hurried onward.
But the princess, sitting beside me, looked troubled.
"Princess Lilith, is something worrying you?"
"..."
"Perhaps you regret using the power of the blessing on me?"
"That's not it! What you did was truly an achievement!"
"But there will probably be people who oppose it at the castle."
"Yes..."
The princess fell silent again and stared straight ahead. It was a bad time to bring it up, but there was something I wanted to ask her before we reached the royal capital.
"If I may be so bold, Princess Lilith, what exactly is the secret of the royal family?"
"Uh... That is..."
I glanced behind me, but nobody seemed to be listening. Besides, with the engine and road noise, they probably couldn't hear us unless we raised our voices.
The vehicle was full of noise, but the beastfolk might still hear us, so I moved as close to the princess as possible and whispered.
"Now that I've become your so-called holy knight, couldn't you tell me?"
"I suppose... you have a point..."
The princess was hesitating over the royal family's secret. Could it be something that fundamentally denied the origins of the royal family?
"The standard secret in stories like this is that the first king came from a lowly background..."
"You! How did you know?!"
The princess stared at me in shock. Stories like that had existed throughout history and across the world.
Even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japan's ruler, was said to have come from a foot soldier's family—or even to have been born a farmer.
Tokugawa Ieyasu's family, the Matsudaira clan, had originally been local strongmen in Mikawa. They were practically just slightly more important farmers.
The princess had raised her voice, so the women in the vehicle were looking over at us.
I moved even closer to the princess and lowered my voice.
"When you say a lowly background, you mean he came from a slave background, right?"
"Ugh..."
Judging from the princess's reaction, I had hit the mark. So the castle archives must have contained records about it.
"Princess, before a country came into existence, everyone was a commoner—no, there wasn't even such a status as commoner. People settled in one place, their numbers grew, and powerful individuals emerged among them. Those powerful people became clan leaders and then nobles, while the people who united the country became the royal family. Isn't that how it happened?"
"You are right... And the first king was a man who received power from a woman who possessed the blessing."
"Then..."
"But for a royal family to rule a country, it must be sacred."
"Well, that may be true. If people knew the first king had been a slave, they might think that even a slave could found a country. But... you don't want the people to think that way, do you?"
"Exactly..."
"Hmm."
As a Japanese person, I didn't consider it all that important—the first king having been a slave.
But to the people of this world, it might truly be a fact capable of turning heaven and earth upside down.
The origins of the first king and the power of the blessing—that was the top secret of this country.
Perhaps the Empire had been founded in the same way. They said the Emperor possessed a power similar to the blessing.
I would ask Akira about it later.
The two vehicles drove along the highway in clouds of dust, and fields gradually began appearing beyond the forest.
We continued smoothly, and when the streets of the royal capital came into view, we crossed a large river—the Anise River.
"Since you have become a holy knight, you may enter proudly through the main gate, you know?"
"No. It might take too long again, and if we have to flee, the rear gate seems more convenient."
"If I am with you, I will not allow such a thing!"
"Even if you say that, Princess Lilith, who knows what the others will say..."
"If we fail to grant a fitting reward to the person who saved the country, that would be a disgrace to the royal family."
The princess said that, but I had a feeling there would be trouble.
'Kenichi, are we almost there?'
A transmission came from the vehicle behind us.
"Yeah, almost."
'This is a city about as large as the Imperial capital.'
"Apparently it has a population of over a million."
'Then it's about the same size as the Imperial capital after all.'
Even when I glanced behind me, everyone wore relieved expressions. Perhaps climbing and descending that pass had been stressful after all.
Horse-drawn carriages really did fall off the cliffs there, after all.
Since I didn't know the way to the castle, I had Mairen-san come from the back seat and guide us.
The royal capital was like a maze. Kaldon-san had guided us when we came here, but reaching the castle as a first-time visitor was almost impossible.
We drove around and around through the maze of the royal capital, and as the sun began to set, we finally reached the castle's rear gate.
The vehicles crossed the stone bridge over the moat.
"Open the gates!"
The armored guards were startled when they saw the princess lean out of the vehicle window and shout.
"Your Highness! Thank goodness you are safe!"
"Enough greetings! Open the gates!"
When the guards opened the gate, the two vehicles slipped into the castle's rear courtyard.
"All right, we've arrived! Thank you for your hard work, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much!"
"What are you saying?! I am going to report our return immediately, so you—wait here! Don't run away, understand?"
"I'm not going to run away now. I haven't even received payment for my work yet."
"Good!"
The princess got out of the vehicle and headed into the castle with Mairen-san and the other maids.
Since her return was unexpected, nobody had come out to greet her.
My vehicle was faster than any means of communication in this world.
After getting out, I stretched. Bell got out too and began patrolling the area.
Akira got out of the Prado as well.
"Kenichi, what are we going to do?"
"For now, shall we prepare to spend the night?"
I explained that there would probably be trouble because the princess had used the power of the blessing without permission.
"Hmm... So they'll gather the ministers and hold an emergency meeting?"
"Apparently there's something called a Royal Family Round Table Conference."
"So that princess is going to get hauled over the coals there?"
Imagining the scene made me feel a little sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do.
"We probably won't be able to leave today. Then let's bring out the house."
Even if something happened, we had two people with blessings and cheat abilities, plus two grand mages. We could force our way through almost anything.
If the princess truly intended to leave the royal family, we could take her and flee.
Carrying a princess in my arms and running away sounded romantic—but if it really came to that, I would feel terrible for my family.
"If things go badly, I'm sorry in advance."
Assuming the worst, I apologized to Akira as well.
"Don't worry about it! Even if I'd stayed in the Empire, there was nothing I could do. I was planning to seek asylum anyway. Still, people in high places are pretty much the same everywhere, huh?"
Akira laughed, but he had apparently been through plenty of dangerous situations, so this didn't seem to faze him.
I brought the house out of my Item Box and began preparing dinner.