Rokuko's Condition, and the Speaker Golem

Oh, come to think of it, I hadn't told Rokuko about becoming village chief.

I headed to Rokuko's room. I knocked and walked in.

"Ufufufufu."

Rokuko was in the middle of the room, gazing at the red ring on her left ring finger with a silly grin. It's become a fairly familiar sight lately… I heard an auditory hallucination of Haku-san's footsteps and almost reflexively turned around to prostrate myself. My mental rehearsal went perfectly today too. Please at least spare my life.

After watching her for a few seconds without being noticed, I decided to speak up.

"Hey, Rokuko?"

"Wha?! W-Wait, at least knock before you come in! And wait for a response! This is a maiden's room, you know?!"

Rokuko quickly hid her left hand behind her back and tried to compose herself. I did knock, but I didn't wait for a response, come to think of it.

"Ah, my bad, my bad. I just had something to tell you."

"Eh, what is it? … Wait, let me prepare myself mentally."

"Yeah, it's just a normal business matter though? I don't know what you're thinking about. Definitely don't. Oh, I became the village chief."

I told the red-faced Rokuko my business quickly and decided to head back to my room.

How did things end up like this?

I don't recall raising any romantic flags with Rokuko.

At most, I drove the bandits out of the dungeon, expanded the dungeon, and built the inn.

And bought her melon bread with DP?

… Maybe Dungeon Cores have some tendency to automatically fall for their Dungeon Masters or something…

"Wait, Kehma. Village chief?"

Oh, she stopped me.

"Yeah, there have been more people around here lately, right? So everyone decided to make it a proper village, and I became the village chief."

"Mm, so in other words, Kehma is the greatest among the humans here. Well, obviously, since this is my dungeon."

"… Personally, I'd like to push all the troublesome stuff onto other people if possible, but… now that I think about it, the village chief is the one in the position to push troublesome things onto others."

Village chiefs are the ones who push troublesome things onto heroes, after all.

Though it's also a position where troublesome things come flying your way. But since I can't leave here as the Dungeon Master anyway, the equation of village problems equaling my problems doesn't change. Let's just quietly resign myself to that.

"Hm? But now that you're village chief, what about the inn?"

"Nothing will really change from how it's been… is what I'd like to say, but where I live is a problem… It's weird in various ways for the village chief to be renting a room at the inn because he doesn't have a house."

"Ah, then when you build a house, I'll move there too."

"… Eh? Rokuko, this inn is properly your house though?"

"Eh?"

Besides, even if houses get built, since the village grounds are entirely within the dungeon's territory, a house is basically just another room. The dungeon's functions are really convenient here.

"Now that you mention it, that's true."

"Yeah, but moving is a pain, so maybe I'll just add an annex to the inn…? Having to walk to the inn every day sounds troublesome too."

"That sounds good. Like a dormitory?"

"Something like that."

To the outside world, we'll say I got permission from the inn's owner to build an annex. It'll be both the village chief's residence and a lodge. Should I hurry up and ask Narikin for help?

The leadership group probably won't complain, but if they do, I'll just push it through with the village chief's authority. Even if I'm just a figurehead, I am the village chief after all.

"Oh, make a room for me in the village chief's residence too. It'll be a piece of cake for you, right, Kehma?"

"… Well, sure, but are you certain?"

The village chief's residence, huh. Maybe I should make it a bit bigger. There's still plenty of land left.

 

＊ ＊ ＊

 

Well then, I thought of something regarding magic practice. I wondered if golems could be used for that as well.

The intended use would be as a phonograph.

Ideally, I'd be able to buy something like an IC recorder with DP, but apparently machines with computers in them can't be purchased. Is it the transistors? Are transistors not allowed?

… By the way, there is a non-computer phonograph in the catalog. But it costs an incredible 1,000,000 DP. So I decided to make one myself.

The mechanism of a phonograph isn't that complicated. For recording, the speaker receives vibrations and carves the sound into grooves on a record. For playback, the speaker vibrates according to the carved grooves.

So how would I do it with golems?

Simple: make the speaker itself a golem and have the golem memorize and reproduce the vibrations.

And the speaker?

That's even simpler. Using paper or leather as a membrane and making it vibrate at very fine frequencies produces sound. Even a string telephone is a proper speaker. In other words, I just need to turn paper cups—5 DP for twelve of them—into golems, and they should be able to function as phonographs.

"Alright, let's experiment."

I used [Create Golem] on a paper cup. After easily turning it into a golem, I held it like a string telephone.

"Record the following vibrations… Ahem. Test, test. The weather is fine today… Stop recording. Reproduce the recorded vibrations."

"Ahem. Test, test. The weather is fine today."

A quiet version of my voice came from the paper cup. Success. It even recorded the throat-clearing.

When I told it to reproduce the vibrations louder, it became almost the same volume as my original voice. Another success.

… Okay, next is seeing how much it can memorize.

"Record the current vibrations as number one. Record the next vibrations—"

And as a result, the paper cup speaker golem could record a total of twenty seconds. When I tried to record more than that, it would forget the oldest one… This is apparently a much more difficult command than the usual ones.

Twenty seconds should be enough to record magic incantations.

Since saying "record" and such each time was also a pain, I drew record and play buttons on it. Touch the record button to start recording, touch the play button to play back. Adding those features reduced the recording limit to eighteen seconds.

… So there really is a memory capacity for commands… I didn't know since I'd only been giving simple commands like "dig here" until now. This was also a good experimental result.

Now then, next let's try recording a magic incantation. First up is water magic.

"Oh water, become a small sphere. [Water]."

A ball of water appeared in the air, so I stopped recording… I couldn't just splash it on the floor, so I caught it in the paper cup golem I was holding and gulped it down.

Phew. After taking a breath, I played it back.

"Oh water, become a small sphere. [Water]."

… Oh, it played back properly even though it was wet.

The paper cup golem can be used as both a speaker and a cup. What a useful fellow.

"I wish it could actually use magic with this though…"

For now, I'll give this paper cup golem with the [Water] incantation recorded to Ichika. Nerune should already know it.

If she reviews it herself, she should be able to practice the magic incantation while playing it back… Ah, I just thought of something good. I'll separate it into a receiver and speaker like a telephone handset. That should be easier to use.

… What was that magic Nerune couldn't learn again?