After letting the squad rest, I went up to the second floor of the lodgings and heard a shriek from the far end of the hallway.
“Graaah! More people came pouring in?”
It came from the innermost room, behind a closed door.
It was a sudden outburst, but it was one I had heard before.
I paid it no mind and walked toward the room the sound had come from.
A moment later, I stood before the closed door, and instead of opening it, I stepped aside.
Bang!
The instant I moved, the door flew open.
An ice golem carrying an armful of documents rushed out from inside.
An ice golem carrying paper documents.
I worried the papers might get wet, but the documents in the golem’s arms were perfectly dry.
As the small ice golem passed by me, Soph’s voice reached my ears.
[Perhaps because it obtained a fire golem, the spirit’s skill at handling the elements seems to have improved.]
Before, the ice golem would melt and drip if it got even a little warm.
But the golem now descending the stairs did not get so much as a drop of water on the documents.
Just as Soph said, the spirit’s skill had improved.
Through the door the golem had left open, I went inside.
Documents were piled on the floor and heaped high on the desk.
There was a reason an ice golem had been carrying an armful of paperwork out of this room.
An angry voice came from behind the stacks of documents.
“We finally stabilized things, and now you’re telling me more than twice as many people came here?”
I pretended not to hear and cracked a joke.
“To think you’d waste the paper I went to such trouble to bring back like this. At this rate, in a little while we’ll have to start painting murals on cave walls.”
The person behind the piles of documents snorted at my words.
Then he said,
“We’re so short on computers that we’re doing calculations on calculators right now. If you tell me I can’t even use paper, I’m quitting on the spot. Remember that.”
That would be a problem.
If my brother said he wouldn’t do it, there was no one else I could trust to leave it to.
It seemed I would have to write down a huge amount of paper and stationery on the list of things to bring back when I went to Earth this time.
As I walked over to my brother, I glanced through the scattered documents.
There were papers on food rationing, papers on housing issues, even graphs on the supply and demand of chickens, rabbits, and crops.
The documents were filled with complicated contents.
“There’s this much work? There should be plenty of empty houses, and supplies should be abundant too.”
The spirit and I had thought we had prepared diligently.
And yet, paperwork was needed to this extent.
Puzzled, I asked my brother.
“What? Did you ask if there’s a lot of work?”
Along with his furious voice, the mountain of documents collapsed.
Crash.
Behind the collapsed mountain, I saw my angry brother.
It seemed I had said the wrong thing.
It took a bit of time and some coffee for my brother to calm down.
After drinking the coffee from the box, my brother regained his composure.
I sat down on a chair I had roughly dragged over and asked him,
“Is it that hard?”
At my question, my brother let out a sigh.
“It’s killing me.”
“It looked like things were running pretty well, though…”
Everyone I had seen on the way to the lodgings had bright expressions.
Judging by the healthy shine on their faces, they seemed to be eating well too.
At my words, my brother shook his head.
“That’s why it’s hard. Do you know what kind of suffering it takes to make it look like things are somehow running when all we’ve done is put some food ingredients and daily necessities in an empty city and keep shoving people into it?”
He placed his hand on the desk strewn with documents and raised his fingers one by one.
“I redo the housing assignment chart three times a day. If we want to move people into houses where the clean water and sewage lines have been connected first, then the food and medical distribution charts all have to be revised too.”
Was it like throwing food ingredients at someone and telling them to cook?
It probably wasn’t an exact analogy, but I could at least tell that my brother had suffered.
Even so, I shrugged at his words.
“How would I know?”
I did not know, and I had no intention of knowing.
It wasn’t for nothing that I had handed off work to other people.
At my words, my brother stared at me, then sighed again.
“This isn’t something I should be complaining to you about. More importantly, you’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
“I’m fine.”
There had been many places where I was hurt, but they had all healed, so it wasn’t a lie.
My brother, who had been studying me closely, asked something else.
“Since you killed the Demon King, does that mean the dangerous work is over now?”
It seemed he had heard all the news up here as well.
However, there was still something he did not know.
As the person managing this city, my brother needed to know.
“There’s still one thing left.”
I explained the situation to him.
The story that, although the Demon King was dead, the moon still remained.
After hearing my story, my brother frowned.
“You’re saying you have to fight again. And I probably can’t stop you. With things like this, how can I even complain?”
This was why my brother helped with my work even while grumbling.
Because his family was fighting while risking his life.
When my brother first came to Trappist and heard the circumstances, he had been extremely angry, but he had no alternative either.
In the end, my brother had no choice but to keep helping me.
After clicking his tongue at my explanation, my brother’s expression hardened a moment later.
He asked,
“Then, the others…”
I thought he would realize quickly, but perhaps because he had been worried about me, my brother was late to catch on.
This was why I had come here in the first place.
I told him the truth.
“The surface is dangerous. The lake base and the desert terraforming ruins can’t stop the monsters that come down from the satellite. People will stay in this city for the time being. During that time, everyone coming from Earth will also be brought to this city.”
The Chinese headed for Taiping, while the Americans and the chosen civilians from other countries headed for Paradise, but there were also many Awakened heading to Trappist.
Before, we had kept them at the lake base or the desert ruins, but now that we did not know when monsters might fall from the moon, we could not leave people there.
They all had to be on this planet.
“My God. Then how many people are coming…”
At my words, my brother muttered with a hollow expression.
Seeing his face, I felt too guilty to keep sitting there.
Rising from my seat, I said to him,
“I’ll leave it to you.”
Leaving only those words behind, I tried to make my escape immediately.
But before I could leave the room, my brother came back to his senses first.
I thought I would be showered with curses, but what my brother said was not a curse.
“When you go to Earth, meet Father at least once. He probably won’t try to leave, but I think it’s only right that you at least visit him.”
It was something I had not expected to hear—no, something I had deliberately turned away from.
Stopping at the threshold, I gave no reply and stepped out into the hallway.
As I walked down the hallway in silence, Soph’s voice came to me.
[When you go to Earth this time, I think it would be best for you to see your father.]
At the unexpected words, I stopped walking again.
It was the first time Soph had brought up my father.
Until now, Soph had not spoken about my family.
For Soph to bring it up so directly.
It was strange.
“What do you mean by that?”
At my question, Soph said something even more unexpected.
[What is so strange about a master seeing his disciple’s parents?]
“No, have you been reading some martial arts novels or something?”
At the continued odd remarks, I couldn’t help saying something.
In truth, the people who knew Soph—my squad members—thought Soph was my master.
The teacher who had taught me magic.
That statement was not wrong.
I had not learned magic directly from Soph, but most of the magic I knew came from him, and I had learned far more than that from Soph as well.
Even so, I did not think of Soph as my master.
To me, Soph was closer to family than a master.
Hearing from someone like that that I should see my father made my chest sink heavily.
Just because I did not feel good, I could not distance myself from Soph.
Though there was time, there was even more to do.
While the people on leave toured the underground city, and my brother tore his hair out over the increased population, I was heading back to the Sanctuary through the ruined city.
Before going to Earth, I had to finish the preparations I could make here.
Preparations to get rid of the monsters on the moon.
That was no different from restoring the magic circle Soph had made.
To restore that magic circle, there were things that had to be prepared.
First, I had to confirm whether the magic circle was intact.
[That has already been confirmed. The fact that the half-destroyed moon is still maintaining its orbit is proof.]
According to Soph, what was holding the half-destroyed moon in orbit was the magic circle Soph had created.
If the magic circle had been broken, that moon would have fallen onto this planet.
[Originally, the magic circle contained a spell to push the destroyed fragments of the moon out of orbit. Because only half of it was destroyed, it is maintaining its orbit like that.]
If the magic circle was intact, next we needed a way to get to the moon.
There was a way for that too.
I had already been to the moon.
The moon I had gone to while fighting the Control Object.
Beneath the ruined city where I had fought the Control Object, there was a sewage treatment facility that led to the moon.
I had gone through that facility to visit the moon.
Because the moon had been broken, the place I arrived at was outer space, and there was no facility to return by, but that was not a problem for me.
Since the coordinates could not be fixed, I could not go to the moon with other spatial transfer devices, but if I used the ruins’ sewage treatment facility, I could still go there now.
“The spatial transfer device was still working. I don’t think going to the moon will be difficult.”
[It is not a spatial transfer device, but a sewage treatment facility.]
As always, Soph nitpicked, but I pretended not to hear him.
As for a way to block possible enemy attacks while activating the magic circle, I planned to find that on Earth.
Earth’s weapons had even worked on the Demon King.
Even if I had to threaten them, I intended to bring back as many as possible.
Once even the defensive preparations were finished, only one thing would remain.
Restarting the stopped magic circle.
[If there is enough energy, I can activate it.]
Although it had gathered the power of the Magic Kingdom, the one who had made it was Soph, so with him there, activation seemed entirely possible.
Now, the only thing lacking was energy.
[It is a spell that destroys a satellite. Naturally, it cannot be done with ordinary energy. When we first made it, we used all of the black stones the kingdom possessed and a great many artifacts handed down through the generations.]
They used artifacts to destroy the moon?
I felt like I finally understood why this planet had fewer artifacts than Paradise.
It was regrettable, but there was nothing to be done.
[The Demon King’s black stone would likely be of great help as well… But we cannot use that, can we?]
“No. Hanna has already claimed the Demon King’s black stone.”
I had not heard it separately, but I had a feeling I knew what she intended to use the black stone for.
She was Earth’s guardian.
Earth also had terraforming ruins.
The energy possessed by the Demon King’s black stone would be a great help, but not having it did not make things impossible.
There was no black stone as powerful as the Demon King’s black stone, but instead, there were many black stones.
I was heading to the Sanctuary to collect them.
After flying through the night, I arrived at the Sanctuary.
From the sky, I looked down at the barren land where the radiation had been purified.
Several days had passed, but nothing had changed.
The collapsed mountain, the dried-up lake, the ruined ground.
Neither the countless monsters nor their corpses were anywhere to be seen.
Floating in the air, I lowered my hand.
Spreading my hand wide, I took the entire lake into view and began to recite the spell.
“Find them. Come forth.”
A magic circle appeared in front of my hand.
Within the large circle, symbols related to detection magic appeared, and then symbols related to gravity magic and telekinetic magic were overlaid on top.
As I created the magic circle, I built up equations in my mind.
I built equations based on Earth’s common sense, used the air as a medium, and finally set the target.
Though I could not see them, I could feel countless black stones buried underground.
“Target set. Akzar black stones.”
With my declaration, the magic was cast.
Fwoooosh!
Countless black stones surged up from the ground.
Dozens, hundreds of black stones flew toward me.
Earth Terraforming (1)