E3.5 Chapter 11

: Comrade

[Mike POV]

Claude is weird...

He suddenly asked me to come along when I wanted to visit Roa. Since childhood, I’ve been friends with him and know him better than he knows himself.

However, on the day we met with Rudeus, he suddenly became different. It should be a good change, but I can feel it...

His change is good on the outside but bad on the inside... There seems to be something wrong in his mind. There seems to be something distracting him.

Every time I met him, he was constantly fatigued. I can see his exhaustion in his gestures and the dread behind his smile. Whenever he touched his head in pain, I could see that he had something he couldn’t say to me.

I had a good grasp of human emotions, which is why I was sent to become an apprentice merchant and trained to be the successor of the merchant group.

I trust my judgment; the group also trusts me. Every decision I made was successful and created more money for the merchant group.

Well, leaving those things aside.

Something important needed to be said twice.

Claude is weird.

I know that he’s been weird since the day he was born, and the fact that he’s weird should not be a problem by itself. However, he’s being too anxious.

What’s he scared of?

Would he let me know, I wonder?

I am not a wishy-washy type, and he should be the same.

So I asked him on our way to Roa.

"What makes you so anxious?"

"There’d be a massive incident in the future...." Claude said to me directly, without any change in his expression.

I never knew he would be telling the truth to me. And, I don’t know what kind of incident that is, but I do know that something he fears would be something enormous enough that he can’t do anything with.

"Tell me more about it..." I said seriously.

"Whoa, I never thought you’d believe me." He appears surprised, but I know him better than the other.Thus, I know that Claude will never joke about things he doesn’t mean to say.

I didn’t answer him but only stared at him.

There, I know what makes him anxious. Claude somehow becomes a Miko that can see the future. He knew that he’d be dead after that incident in the future.

in order to deal with his sudden death. He learned martial arts from Mr. Paul and magic from Rudeus. While the enchantment thingy was something he learned on the go, he said that it’s something he learned from his Miko ability.

The day the Fittoa Region would suddenly be mass teleported worldwide with the possibility of us being either dead in the wilderness or sold by the slave merchant.

I see why he suddenly increased the slave merchant's awareness towards the villagers and the mass murder of the illegal slave-hunting in our area...

Knowing him, I can already see the blood flowing in his hands.

I see, so this is what he hid from us. As expected, I won’t be able to imagine that kind of tragedy.

I've already learned about the blessed child named Miko. They’re called so by the people, so there are plenty of Miko in this world. Some were known, while most were unknown.

Although this is the first time I have met with one, several informational notes tell us about the Miko.

I tend to get side tracked while reminiscing...

But, knowing my friend’s ability, I’m now fully aware of what I must do in the future.

Well, my friend is a Miko! Whoo, that’s cool.

Leaving aside his future sight, I can already see that we can’t even know the extent of this event. This phenomenon isn’t something a layman in a disaster could deal with. After all, not even the one in the flying castle might know that reason.

Knowing further, I can see that Perugius of the flying fortress also understood the disaster that’d happen in the future.

All I can do is fortify the human, whether in my merchant groups or the village.

Well, let’s get it started.

…

We need to make a path to be on the safer side and create a safer trade route. A road to make the carriage ride smoother.

In this case, I thought of making pavement. However, it’s redundant, said Claude.

For this instance, Claude thought of using the mages and himself to create a sturdy road using the solidification magic and an original spell he developed using earth, water, and fire magic.

He calls it Tartar.

The tartar was used atop the smoothened ground.

The ground was decently smoothened as the ground was just made even. Using Claude’s tartar magic, the hot black thing washed the ground, then, using a pebble he gathered every morning along with the villager, he dumped it on the ground.

Then he creates a mixture called asphalt.

After again dumping the hot tar above the pebbles, he dumped the asphalt atop them and used a giant boulder that looked like a wheel. He used a pair of humongous but docile beasts to pull the stone wheel.

While doing so, he taught the villagers how to and started to become their supervisor, making his image better day after day.

I am astonished by his knowledge.

I wish to help and share this knowledge, but he just waves his hand nonchalantly as if he doesn’t care about that.

Later, I learned that even this smooth road he created couldn’t be maintained that easily since the magic spell used was his original, and not many people can use it.

He was the only one, so he was nonchalant about it.

There’s also the fact that this road, is actually a trap for slave traders to come and never come back again. I don’t know what made him hate those slave traders, but his small group of militia actually scary enough to kill the slavers on sight.

He developed one project after another, making the village more prosperous. Even so, he feels that what he did is not enough.

He never stopped training and working in smithing and enchanting while diving into all that hard work.

One day, he showed me a mass-producing tool.

"This artifact will scatter a signal every time. It’s a simple creation that can’t be turned off, and will always be on, and emits a mana signal that allows this monitor to see what the holder was about. I can only let the monitor see the surroundings. It’s still impossible to detect the Mana GPS over 10km from the GPS monitor..." Claude explained a confusing theory to me.

"Whao… GPS… what’s that? " I asked him about the unidentified word.

"This stone produced by the mana tool is a GPS." What the heck is GPS?

"That’s an abbreviation, right?"

"Oh, right... It's... umm, What did they call it again, a Global Positioning System? Right, it’s a Global Positioning System! " He said, while trying to remember the real name.

"Okay... I can understand that a system is a way the tracker detects, but what’s global? " I am ashamed of my lack of knowledge.

"Heck, you asked too much! Just know that it’s an item that allows your location to be known! " He is frustrated, which means He also didn’t really understand the meaning of the item he created. How in the hell can he create something he doesn’t fully understand?

Leaving him and his pathetic explanation of his item aside, this Mana GPS can be sold! I can already see the money that’d roll into my purse once I sold the artifact, not to mention it can be produced freely.

"How many can it produce using a tool?" I asked Claude about the productivity.

"I have one mass-producing machine right now, and a machine can produce five a day using the surrounding mana... It also needs to rest for 5 hours a week, so it doesn’t get overheated, so you can assume it will have 135 GPS every 4 weeks. " Claude explained it to me while writing the calculation on the board.

"That’s not really that much, huh… We are aware that our deadline is approaching. How many monitors can you make?" I said, as I tried to understand the meaning of the device.

"With our deadline, I can create five monitors and two more machines."

"Just create 1 more machine, and make more monitors. We need the monitor more since having 2 should be enough for my merchant group and the villagers. " I said, cutting his ridiculous plan to create more devices and less monitors.

"… I understand" Claude seems dejected by this, but, it can’t be helped our time is limited.

What? Do you want to save more people? With our limited time, no way.

Based on the time limit we deduced from the information, I can assume that we can cover the whole village and my merchant group with the GPS and leave the monitoring to those sent outside of the impacted area.

I can see that he agreed with my decision, and I presume he already realized the importance of my decision, but even so, it’s better to have a priority in who to save and who to forsake.

It’s not like we can save the holder even with the GPS and tracking monitor.

It’s just a prevention measure to make tracking the soon-to-be-missing people easier.

Sigh…

Well,

2 months until the birthday of Rudeus...

The event that will happen a day after Rudeus’ birthday soon occurs

K417 will soon end.

I hope our plan will succeed.

______________________________________________

[Edited 25/06/2022]

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