A few years after that, rumors like these began to spread around the Arclight territory.
—“They say there’s a guy in the Arclight territory with a talent for necromancy.”
—“Apparently he digs potatoes every day, and in his spare time he studies animal bones and muscle structures.”
The necromantic prodigy of House Arclight.
What was the identity of this bizarre being that had appeared at some point?
It was none other than me, Aizen Arclight.
They said the rumors started when a merchant who had come to buy monster materials fainted in shock after seeing his bizarre behavior—assembling bones while covered head to toe in blood.
And those rumors usually reached this sort of conclusion.
—“Has he gone mad from digging up too many potatoes?”
How rude, saying that to someone who, despite appearances, was busy every day digging potatoes and researching robots—no, mecha.
Of course, I had heard this news yesterday while helping out in a nearby village, when by some chance I managed to buy a chicken cheaply and picked up the gossip along the way.
This wasn’t a world where rumors updated in real time, so even that news was probably over a month old.
Besides that, I heard plenty of other things too: that the atmosphere between the Kingdom of Vespia, where I currently lived, and the Empire was growing ominous; news of a chimera that the knights were apparently tracking; and so on. But none of it really mattered to me.
‘Let’s see. This goes like this.’
In the barn I used as a laboratory, I used magic to assemble the bones of the chicken that had served as my precious meal yesterday.
The truth was, bones functioned in an extremely engineering-like manner.
Every movement had a reason, and every part had a form suited to its range of motion.
And naturally, such structures served as data for bipedal walking.
What sort of structure should the skeleton, the frame, have in order to support weight smoothly without straining its movement?
In this countryside, where there were no proper reference materials or specialized books to speak of, bones were about the only thing worth paying attention to.
As I magically fixed the chicken leg I had assembled into place, I smiled in satisfaction.
I carefully moved the bonded bones around, then imitated that structure and…
“Come forth, Guardian Deity of the Earth.”
I gathered mana and cast magic.
Soon, a golem with chicken legs was completed.
Unlike my uncle’s, it had a form modeled after the structure of chicken bones.
I nodded and brought over the upper body propped against the laboratory wall.
It was an upper-body frame for research, with only a skeleton and arms attached for now in mere imitation.
I set that upper body upright and attached the chicken legs.
‘This is what makes golem magic so convenient.’
Speaking of golems, although it was magic, it had a surprisingly excellent quality.
Namely, once you made one, it didn’t immediately collapse.
Of course, structures like the ones my uncle made collapsed once the magic wore off, but even then, the materials themselves didn’t vanish.
Most magic was single-use and disappeared immediately after being cast, but apparently persistent spells were based on creating or excavating earth and stone, so their results remained behind.
No matter what, you couldn’t easily create gold or anything like that, but at the very least, wouldn’t it be possible to gather only metals like iron that were originally contained in soil? Or conversely, to imbue metal with mana?
‘If you think about it, most metals are made by digging up what was formed underground, so maybe…?’
For some reason, it didn’t feel completely impossible, but for now there was nothing I could do about it.
At the moment, I had no choice but to keep trying while doing what I could.
Fortunately, the more I repeated the process, the more precise the parts became, so if I thought of it as training, it was even easier to bear.
Yes, this was how I was supposed to improve my technology.
Right now it was only about as tall as me, but if I kept developing the technology like this, one day, a bipedal—
—Krrnch!
“Aaaagh!”
While I was lost in thought, my painstaking chicken legs collapsed.
The test frame took a few steps, then toppled over.
The chicken-leg frame that should have become a symbol of dreams and hope had failed.
“Damn it, so legs are still impossible after all!”
To be honest, I had expected it.
Since I had memories of my previous life, I knew how difficult it was for a machine to walk on two legs.
Of course, I also knew it wasn’t impossible.
But just because I knew that fact didn’t mean I could immediately create the perfect structure.
So for the time being, I observed the bones of animals, especially giant monsters, very closely.
Because I believed the answer lay within their bodies.
Through the structure of their bones, I had spent several years analyzing how they walked without losing balance.
However, because of that, there was one thing I could say for certain.
‘Even with rough calculations, I still lack the materials.’
I lacked both the knowledge and the materials needed to make a simple frame walk.
They said metal imbued with mana was easy to process, strong, and lightweight, but the problem was that such metal was far too expensive.
If I had even a sample, I could try researching it, but even a tiny piece was outrageously costly.
‘What should I do?’
Bipedal walking was romance.
But I had no intention of stopping there.
What I wanted was not something that could merely stand, but a steel giant that could stride across the battlefield!
“To do that, I need more data…”
Because I had a clear goal, I inevitably had many thoughts.
In truth, there was a lot I had to do.
Not just the legs, but the arms, the upper body, the head unit, the control system.
There was so much to research.
And fortunately, within that misfortune, those things were at least in a state where I could manage them somehow, but I still hadn’t properly experimented—
—Knock, knock, knock.
Pleasant moments always ended quickly.
It seemed an unwelcome guest had arrived.
Since it was bothersome, I tried pretending I wasn’t there.
However, it seemed the other party lacked the patience to wait for me.
—Bang!
The door was immediately torn off, and light came flooding in.
Then a fairly sturdy young man stepped inside with the light at his back.
When I first became aware of myself in this place, he had been smaller than me, but after receiving focused support and eating well for several years, he had grown quite tall.
Even so, he was still shorter than me, who ate mostly potatoes at every meal, but that was because I was big, not because he was small…
“If you’re called, you should come out, Aizen.”
The ones at either side of him were probably the children of retainers.
They were smaller and weaker than Mark, but it seemed they had come along as guards, for what that was worth.
In any case, since Mark had never come here before, I pondered for a moment, then soon reached a conclusion and asked with my head tilted.
“Is something the matter, Young Master?”
In terms of position, Mark was practically above me and received better treatment, so if I didn’t want to be pointlessly reprimanded, I had to speak politely.
Of course, tilting my head wasn’t exactly polite, but my tone was polite, so Mark wouldn’t be able to say much.
And as Mark approached me, he began to put on airs.
“You must have heard as well. Father is going to the royal palace for his promotion.”
“I heard he would be away for about two months, starting in a few weeks.”
It had happened recently, but Edmund, the head of the house, was going to the capital.
I didn’t know the details, but apparently it was a joyous occasion for the family.
For Mark, who would be entering the academy in a few months, it must have been excellent news.
Perhaps that was why Mark put on airs with a proud look.
“While Father is absent, I’ll be taking charge of the territory’s affairs.”
Why was he telling me something I already knew?
A thought of no way crossed my mind, and as if that thought had been correct, Mark soon smiled brightly and said,
“Aizen. Leave this house.”
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what he meant.
Was Mark in a position to decide that as he pleased…?
“Did my uncle permit this?”
Despite appearances, my uncle was the one who had brought me here, and whether I left the house or not was, in truth, within his authority.
But Mark smiled coldly and said,
“I’m the one in charge of the territory’s affairs now. Then doesn’t that make me the highest administrator of this territory?”
I understood what sort of logic he was using.
Should I clarify things a little?
Seeing the guys beside him snickering made me want to sigh.
When the master went out of control, retainers were supposed to stop him.
What Mark was doing now was an act of challenging the head of the house.
Trying to arbitrarily meddle with someone the family head had brought in—in simple terms, doing as he pleased with the family head’s person—was crossing a line.
‘Well, it’s not as if that sort of logic won’t work, though.’
If Mark had been in a position with rivals, that would have been one thing, but since he was the sole heir, it was also true that he essentially held the right to make decisions in the future.
If he wanted me to leave, then I had no choice but to leave.
Aside from my research materials, honestly, my possessions were all worthless enough that I could abandon them.
I shrugged once and opened my mouth.
“Then I’ll take my research materials with me. Give me two days. That should be fine, right?”
“Research? What research could someone like you possibly be doing?”
Mark tilted his head.
Then one of the retainers behind Mark looked around my laboratory, and soon shouted with a face gone pale.
“L-Lord Mark, i-inside there?!”
“What the hell is that?! It’s full of bones, and why is there some kind of demon statue over there?!”
Wondering what he was talking about, I turned my gaze.
Inside were a bed roughly made of straw, an old wooden desk, a basket of potatoes, and specimens I had made by assembling the bones of beasts like chickens for bipedal research.
And one clay doll I had made long ago, recreating the plastic model that had been a treasure from my previous life.
Wasn’t that perfectly ordinary?
‘More importantly, a demon statue? Isn’t that too much?’
Did these barbarians not understand its greatness?
That thing was no mere clay doll.
It was a masterpiece born from decades of research and popularity, recreated by my own hands.
If I told them how much effort had gone into it, the greatness of the machine it recreated, and the greatness of the mecha work in which that machine appeared, would they understand?
But before I knew it, my mouth was already opening.
“That is from one of the greatest mecha masterpieces of all time, Mobile—”
“You damn bastard, so you really were immersed in necromancy!!”
Mark raised his hand and struck the clay doll down.
Since it wasn’t made of plastic, much less metal, that alone was enough to shatter the clay doll.
Its head fell off, and its arm dropped away.
As if telling it to do a Last Shooting, only its right arm and two legs remained, while the rest of its parts fell to the floor.
“Uh… huh?!”
I was flustered because I had never imagined he would strike it down so mercilessly.
It was an act even children who ran toward robots in delight wouldn’t commit.
Even the little demons known as nephews and nieces on the holidays wouldn’t immediately grab one and smash it like that without warning.
Feeling my vision go red, I immediately grabbed Mark by the collar.
“You sons of bitches, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
I shouted without even breathing, my eyes wide, but the very next instant, my body was shoved backward.
Since I had trained my body in my own way, I didn’t fall flat on my back, and Mark seemed momentarily startled when I suddenly lunged at him, but it appeared the retainer behind him wasn’t just for show after all.
“You bastard, mad with necromancy!”
“Were you trying to summon a demon?! Are you really trying to ruin the territory, you lunatic?!”
Fists and kicks immediately came flying, and I moved my arms and legs to block the attacks.
Then Mark also joined in, and a fight broke out with four men tangling together.
“You barbaric bastards! You trash who wouldn’t understand the greatness of mecha even if I preached it to you! Do you even know what you’ve done?!”
“This lunatic grabbed the young master by the collar!”
“Aizen, so you’re finally revealing your true colors! Don’t you know how dangerous necromancy is when abused?! Die! I’ll kill you! …Let go of me!”
Fists flew back and forth violently.
I tried several times to strike Mark in the head, but the retainer bastards shoved their heads in the way and desperately blocked me.
In the midst of that, Mark seemed to decide things would be settled if he used magic, but there was no way I wouldn’t be wary of Mark’s magic.
When fists were flying at such close range, magic had no meaning.
On top of that, I had built up a decent amount of strength and stamina through farm work, so in the grappling itself, things flowed in my favor.
However, the numerical advantage was on their side, so there was nothing I could do about getting injured too.
“You bastard…”
Mark caught his breath, while the retainers behind him looked slightly frightened.
During that brief calm, I wiped what was flowing from my mouth with my hand and checked it.
It seemed my lip had split, and blood was flowing.
The head of the clay doll rolling on the floor entered my sight.
I had heard of antennas being sacrificed to young children during the holidays, but I had rarely heard of a case where something was smashed so mercilessly like that.
Yes, these bastards had gone and done something even children wouldn’t do.
“A beating is the only medicine for you.”
I’ll show you the taste of farm-hardened potato fists.
Until the nearby knights gathered and forcibly separated us, I beat those bastards with the face of an evil spirit.
****
To state the conclusion, it hurt.
Because of the retainers’ desperate friend-shielding, I failed to properly beat Mark, and instead I was the one who got beaten quite a lot.
Still, I gave the knights who tried to beat me a taste of my fists too, and the result was that even the knights were shocked, wondering where a shut-in recluse had gotten such strength. But after I knocked down about three of them, I lost due to being outnumbered.
“Those… bastards…”
The places where I had been hit throbbed.
And then I saw the clay doll that had been broken in the scuffle.
“Damn it…”
I wanted to build a steel giant.
But I was being treated like a heretical necromancer.
Emptiness and rage ruled my heart.
I still hadn’t even succeeded at bipedal walking, and there was so much to do.
Without thinking, I felt as if I might sink down where I stood.
When too much came crashing down at once, the first thing a person thought of was collapsing.
‘…No, I won’t give up. Like hell I’ll give up!’
Even if I had to take a roundabout path, I would make bipedal walking succeed no matter what.
There was a lot to do, but there was one workaround.
‘If legs won’t work right now, then at the very least, I’ll make it able to crawl anywhere.’
Strictly speaking, that was more efficient too.
Of course, it wasn’t what I wanted, but for now I needed various kinds of motion data.
What came to mind immediately was that guy—treated as a failure, perhaps, but still undeniably a protagonist machine.
That guy, who couldn’t walk, but possessed firepower and the upper body of a robot!
‘I’ll set the lower body aside for now.’
I could keep trying, but if I clung only to that, I wouldn’t be able to make any progress at all.
A blueprint immediately began to form in my head.
‘The engine should be about this size. The structure like this. If I don’t have one, substitute direct-connected mana power…’
For now, the material would be stone, but there should be no problem moving it.
‘Let’s do this.’
I forced myself to stand.
I never expected them to understand anyway.
What I had to do was prove it.
My dream of a steel giant could not be stopped.