Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
In the newly-born East Mist and Diffindor, there was a group that had a unique special existence—the Xiluo undead.
The newly-born Xiluo Empire was an empire with Omar as the lord, which in principle meant that they would automatically become an allied member of the Mist Alliance.
However, even after their reinforcements returned, a large amount of high-level undead stayed behind in East Mist at my request. In order to prevent unnecessary panic, I arranged for all of them to stay within the inner part of Diffindor, which was covered by the Crimeless City domain. At the very least, in this area that was covered by the Crimeless City domain, others would feel much more assured at seeing the undead as they wouldn’t be able to commit any crimes.
Since Emperor Omar had some personality defects in certain areas, such as being brainless, having only muscles for brains, and thinking about nothing but muscles, it was completely impractical to expect him to do anything that a true ruler should do.
With everyone’s support and the unified recommendation of the six original Senators as he was renowned for being the only normal one with an honest and upright heart, the Spider Archduke Lionheart became the new Xiluo’s first Senator.
As for whether Omar would have any objections? He could just go play wherever he wanted, as long as he didn’t get in the way of doing important things. Anyways, he only cared about whether or not he was considered to be the highest-ranked existence.
Apart from the reason of helping East Mist’s people to accept the undead and improve the relationship between East Mist and Xiluo, there was also the existence before me that was another reason.
“Dragonbone Battleship Mizar [1] 1 . Internal Reference Name: ‘Dragonmouth.’ Length: 473 meters. It’s constructed entirely out of handpicked dragonbone. It’s the combination of Auland’s floating battleship technology and undead magic, and it is the Borealis’ sister ship.”
“Your Highness, I have a personal objection to your words just now. I’m tired of perverted people treating ships as females. If possible, please call it a brother ship.”
I heard Marsolit’s objection, but could tell that he was in an excellent mood.
“Heh heh, it seems like Captain Pier has been quite active recently. Right, Marsolit, if you want to let go of part of your physical body and power, I can help create a new body for you. Of course, your current body wouldn’t be maintained anymore, but you can fully become an undead.”
Although taking away this SemiGod level core would affect the Borealis somewhat, I had many high-level undead under my command now and could make up for that loss.
“I’m grateful for your kind offer, but this body is the best connection between me and my family. At least, until I get rid of my enemies that I’ve sworn revenge against, this body is extremely useful. It’ll serve as a constant reminder to not forget about the past.”
The current Marsolit was still in a half-alive, half dead state. His physical body was still half ice and half poisoned and corroded. If he ever wanted the freedom to move about as he pleased, it was obvious that this body of his would be no good.
However, his current declaration doubtlessly meant that he still had attachments to his physical body. Perhaps the memory of Dragonhunter Deimos the First killing his wife and daughter still tortured him every night in his nightmares.
Since this was his own personal choice and wish, I didn’t continue convincing him and instead focused my attention on this new floating battleship, which was constructed completely out of dragonbone.
Auland’s technicians and engineers were in my hands now, but the industrial level here was still far too low. If the smiths here couldn’t even create iron swords, then how could they possibly create the parts necessary for a battleship? In a short period of time, even the production of smaller battleships for ambush attacks would be unrealistic, not to mention producing even larger battleships for large-scale battles.
Floating battleships’ benefits were made quite obvious during the previous battle. Transporting the injured, being a resource warehouse, acting as reinforcements, providing cover fire, sending down resources via parachutes— they were obviously a cheat-like existence that only attacked others and were difficult to attack themselves. Just the Borealis’ excellent performance alone caused us to receive so many orders.
Moreover, this was only their advantages during war. What I truly valued was their worth when used by ordinary civilians.
In this generation that relied on metallic weapons, transportation between cities relied mostly upon horses or horse-drawn carriages. In that case, there was a limit to the speed of transportation, and it would cause an increase in time and human resources used.
There would also be dangerous beasts along the way, lawless bandits, and even legal robbery—by this, I meant local domain lords that collected tolls in order to pass through their domains. In that case, there were quite a few merchant groups that wouldn’t even make it to their destination, or even if they did, their costs and thus prices would be raised astronomically.
After adding in all the tolls, the fees to hire mercenary guards, and money paid to the relatives of those who died during these travels and so on, it would be common for a product to be several hundred times more expensive than its cost of production after arriving in some other area. This didn’t even take into account uncertain factors such as war or plague that would always cause the price of goods to quickly rise.
If we could make floating airships into something common...
“Stop dreaming! Do you think that nobody’s tried using aerial cavalry to transport goods before? Anyone who can become an aerial cavalry rider is a big shot; making them work as transporters? Just the food they eat is probably more expensive than how much profit you can make.”
I quickly received many objections. Perhaps it was this world’s natural law of energy conservation; no matter if it was a magical artifact or a magical beast with the ability to fly, such flight would always have an astronomical expenditure.
Even if I got Auland’s floating airships to come here and work for transportation, I figured that the money earned probably wouldn’t even cover the energy costs of keeping the airships operational.
But, there was one type of existence that broke this natural law—the new generation’s perpetual motion machine, the undead.
The best evidence as the popularity of the undead as laborers in Diffindor. This was because they didn’t know fatigue, didn’t require any rest, didn’t need to eat, and wouldn’t complain no matter how difficult the work was. They were basically the ideal laborer that any capitalist dreamed about, and this was the main reason why people accepted them so quickly despite their frightening appearances.
Since the Borealis was basically a top-level product of undead construction—Envy of the Seven Deadly Sins—it was technically a combat airship that had zero energy costs. Not only that, its main deck’s mage towers and energy batteries created its own energy loop, and it could also absorb extra mana that flowed out from the local area as well as provide energy to other magical artifacts as well. It was basically an almost perfect combat platform, which could fight for long periods of time.
“If soul and undead airships become commonplace, and every major city sets up soul airship airports and gargoyle taxis appear in the cities... Fine then, I admit that sometimes my imagination may run wild, but this seems like a feasible plan. The technology for it is available, and we have tons of undead mages capable of creating these objects. All we need is the determination to push this plan through.”
And this was only the civil side of things. It would be even more useful for politics. If all the biggest cities of the Mist Alliance established aerial trade routes, then the trade, diplomacy, and interaction between civilians of each country of the Mist Alliance would obviously become a lot more frequent. It would also tighten the relationship between countries... No matter how friendly two countries were, if they needed two or three months to reach each other, they would naturally drift apart. If reaching another country took only two or three days, however, it wouldn’t be all that different from going to the next city.
Once my imagination started running wild, I was unable to stop myself. Not only did I extrapolate this scenario to the transportation field, I felt that agriculture could also use undead cows as tireless labor, and the industrial field already had plenty of undead laborers doing all sorts of manual labor. How could I possibly not be moved by the potential huge benefits and profits available in this field?
Of course, my goal did meet with a few small obstacles, such as the Holy Light that loathed the undead, such as Holy Knights that swore to eliminate the evil undead, such as the Holy Church which often shouted about the Holy War.
Fine, they were all actually the same obstacle. If I went about so obviously making the undead into a central part of our workforce, I would immediately be declared the number one most evil heretical undead mage in the world. The Holy War was right before us, but I had to say, this wasn’t a conflict that I couldn’t take care of.
First, this was Wumianzhe’s territory, not the God of Holy Light’s territory. This was the most critical part in resolving this conflict. The Gods were very strict about territorial divisions, and the Holy Church viewed respecting the other True Gods of Order as highly important. After all, if there really was a battle involving the Gods and the Holy Church themselves were the side that lacked logic and reason, then the God of Holy Light, whose powers were like a divine server to draw power from, may not help his own believers.
Secondly, in the Northlands, the humans here hated the Holy Church more than any other humans did. In the battle not long ago, the Holy Church should have stood up for them but didn’t, whereas the undead came to their aid, instead. This had caused history and reality to clash and the Holy Church to be publicly considered as unreliable, which further increased the northerners’ distaste towards the Holy Church.
The most important part was that the Holy War was arriving and the Northlands wasn’t the area that the Holy Church wanted to focus on spreading their teachings in. The higher-ups of the Holy Church were all focusing on those mega-level empires. As long as we didn’t do anything too overboard, they would be more than happy to pretend to not see anything. After all, with a major enemy in front of them, adding a new enemy on top by breaking ranks with a former ally would obviously be the most foolish action of all. A great deal of effort would be spent for nothing but self-frustration.
Of course, I didn’t expect them to have such wisdom or tolerance; every religion had their fervent believers and extremists, which was why my messenger was already on his way with an extravagant present for them. I intended to see if those red-garbed higher-ups of theirs really were cleaner or not than their predecessors from three hundred years ago.
Considering how the Holy War was coming and that they wouldn’t want to lose their God’s protection, on top of a large amount of gold coins for them, I had a more than 80% guarantee that the Holy Church would pretend to not see anything here, in which case I could try to push through my plan.
As for whether or not there would be a reckoning afterwards... there definitely would be one, but who knows which side would commence the reckoning?
As the inventor of undead construction, I had far surpassed the ancient undead emperors. This new airship was something that I personally designed.
It received the glorious name of being a dragonbone battleship because its entire body was crafted out of dragonbone. Every inch of it was made from real dragon skeletons. Some dragonbone was accumulated before in the past, some was recently gained in the Underground World, and some was even from that little brat Reyne during the previous battle.
This dragonbone battleship hovered in midair; the pitch-black dragonbone seemed to give off the faint impression of draconic might. The gigantic airship was covered in black mist, and the mast constructed of souls was accumulating mana. Black thunder could be seen flashing in the mist, making it seem like an ultimate weapon that would destroy the world.
The front, where the “dragonmouth” was located, had saw-shaped huge teeth harvested from real dragons. This would be the main weapon in the future, and it was also the source of its code name.
Dragonbone was already a priceless, rare magical ingredient. If I tried calculating the price of this vessel... fine, let’s not worry about the details of cost effectiveness; let us discuss its functions instead.
Cough—cough—I shouldn’t be blamed for wasting funds on investments like this. Every experimental vessel required an expense, and in order to achieve the best result, one had to ignore the costs. After it was truly complete, the final bill would likely make the original designer receive a heart attack, causing the final result to be that the design would be endlessly pushed back and become nothing but a backup technology reserve.
But, our situation was a little different; all our dragonbone had been accumulated over time. However, if we tried to create bone dragons, we would be unable to come up with complete skeletons, and forcefully creating low-level, low-quality bone dragons was something that we disdained. So, in a way, this was making good use of what we had on hand.
Of course, as one of the highest quality magical ingredients, dragonbone was indeed a bit expensive and a bit precious, but they had excellent effects and numerous properties. The parts where the structure was unreasonable or not up to standards were forcibly ignored due to the excellent quality of materials used.
And, apart from this, the precious dragonbone had another usage—it looked really cool.
The countless dragonbones interweaved with each other to form a huge combat airship. This dragonbone battleship descended from the skies accompanied with dark clouds, and it resembled a demon king that crawled out of the Chaos Abyss who was bent on destroying this world. It possessed a depraved beauty... fine then, I’ll stop being ridiculous. It was true that it looked rather scary, and that was exactly what I wanted.
After dealing with the trouble of the Holy Church, the other trouble on my plate wasn’t so easy to deal with.
That trouble was the people’s old-fashioned biases against the undead and undead objects. Although the Red Hunting Hounds’ knight squadron and the undead laborers’ existence made the East Mist far more accepting of undead than most other countries, there was still a long way to go before people here could truly accept undead products as part of their daily lives and even necessities. However, this process could be expedited through governmental guidance.
“This shall become a heroic combat airship just like the Borealis. It shall become a new legend in its own right. When all our citizens view it as their pride, they’ll naturally no longer be as resistant towards undead products.”
Considering that troublesome ‘deep sea hunting quest’ I had ahead of me, one airship could never match up to a flotilla. It would definitely be necessary to expand the airship squadron. Transporting mining and human resources from the barbarian tribes could also become a regular daily occurrence if the airship numbers were expanded.
“Something like airships should be well organized in squads in order to have true might. Your Highness, we need at least a full squadron in order for the airships to show their true might; they’ll be able to cover each other, support each other, and utilize combat tactics. It’s the same with woman—one could never be enough; you need a harem...”
“Sexual harassment is forbidden!”
These were the words of Captain [NG1] Pier, who was scheduled to take charge of the Mizar, but before this perverted man who treated his own airships as women could complete his declaration on harems, he was knocked on the back of his head by his vice-captain[NG2] .
*Smack!*
“My apologies, Your Highness. The Captain drank too much this morning again.”
This vice-captain’s name was Shaweir, and she was was rather tall and had a handsome and open-seeming face. She appeared like the mature-older-sister type, but when I stared at her in astonishment, she awkwardly put the broken chair leg behind her back.
“Relax, Pier has really thick skin. A personality-punishing attack like that is nothing more than a little nap for him—he’ll be back to normal the very next day.”
Taking a look at the shattered chair in Shaweir’s hands, the huge bump on Pier’s head, and the traces of blood on the floor, I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of this since she had said so. After all, this woman had the nickname of being “Pier’s conscience,” and had been his vice-captain for so many years already. I hoped she wouldn’t kill him.
“I’ve heard that Shaweir has liked Pier for a long time already, but Pier has always treated ships as his true love. I never expected that this rumor was real... and why does the way they interact with each other seem so familiar?”
Cough—cough—I shouldn’t pry too much into certain things. I should get back to the main topic; having a trustworthy new Captain and his crew was really such a reassuring thing... just pretend that you believe that.
An airship battalion was absolutely necessary, but the industrial foundation and resource supplies were unable to follow up. This led to the undead battleships that were quick and easy to create to become the best choice of all. This involved my greater plan in so many areas, and I absolutely wouldn’t allow anything to go wrong with it.
“One hundred years later, perhaps people will treat me as the wisest inventor of all? Or the most dangerous undead mage to appear in the past thousand years? I think that both are possible... Marsolit, is there anything else that you need?”
As for why I referred to it as the Borealis’s sister ship, that was because its internal structure was mostly copied from the Borealis. Even the people in charge of creating the Mizar were the same as the Borealis, not to mention that Marsolit was the overseer for this entire project.
Although I was asking, I expected that since he had plenty of subordinates and the best resources all provided to him, he wouldn’t have any requests.
“Um, there really is an awkward request of mine that I would like Your Highness’s approval on...”
Marsolit was actually hesitating? This was astonishing.
“What is it? Just tell me directly. As long as I can do it, I’ll try my best.”
“Alright, then I’ll say it directly... Could you toss that pervert who keeps drooling at my engines and cannons into my cannon, please? I’m clearly an outstanding man who possesses the wonderful Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon [2] 2 , yet that bastard actually treats me as a woman! The engine isn’t a butt! There couldn’t possibly be any feeling no matter how much he touches it! I said, stop touching it! I’m talking about you, Pier Papin!”
“Ah, in front of an amazing engine that spouts thick smoke and tremendous booms, any beautiful woman’s curves are useless. The curves of the cannons are the sexiest of all...”
Alright then, Shaweir was correct. Were all gentlemen (perverts) related to cockroaches? Bleeding so much just earlier—was that an instant complete recovery?”
Right now, in front of me, this muscular man was pressing his face against the Borealis’s engine room while wearing a black skintight outfit. He was making a cool pose that showed off his muscles (what he viewed as cool), and singing his own praises (what he believed to be praises).
“Just try to bear with it; he’s to be the Mizar’s Captain... The hell, he’s actually putting on Timlad’s cat ears and magical girl sailor uniform? Someone prevent him from polluting this world!”
But this was only the beginning...
With a twist of his waist, an elegant pose, and a sultry expression, he instantly put on the magical girl sailor uniform. The hairy thick legs beneath it in combination with the white lace that could just barely be perceived caused all the spectators to be shocked.
“Meow! Meow! I’m going to punish you in the name of the moon...”
*Smack!*
This time, what flew towards him wasn’t a chair, but a table instead... I just now discovered that Shaweir had a Strength-related natural talent.
But, unfortunately, even Shaweir who was huffing and puffing didn’t win anything.
That pervert’s pink magical girl outfit actually flashed golden and helped him to entirely ignore that table.
“Ahhhh! My power is coming! Timlad’s combat clothing is truly amazing! However, the pose and activation incantation required to use it is a little strange. Now then, let me try out the next incantation... Although I’m cute (seductive look in his eyes), I will summon death (panty flash)...”
Even the undead could no longer tolerate this. The workers were running for their lives, and those that hadn’t escaped had all collapsed. Harloys had completely vanished somewhere, and I felt as if I had gone blind.
“I’ve changed my mind! Marsolit! Toss that bastard into your Armstrong Cannon, and shoot him to the moon that he wants to go to so much!”
Note:
1. Mizar is the name of the second star of the Big Dipper constellation.
2. Gintama reference!

Comments

Loading...