Millennium

 

… In that regard, the dragon could be called very nearly the greatest of rulers.

His only flaw was being hopelessly dense when it came to a woman's heart.

—A passage found only in the original manuscript of "The Astonishing Ends of the World"

 

"Mentor, Instructor Innis is asking for you."

"Mm, thanks, Nokia…"

I answered the dark-skinned girl who'd stepped into my room without thinking, then clapped a hand over my mouth.

"Sorry. Nora. I got the name wrong again…"

"It's quite alright. But do I really resemble my great-grandmother that much?"

Nora was Nokia's descendant, having arrived in Scarlet just last month. From Nokia's perspective, she was her great-granddaughter.

In the end, Nokia never did return to Scarlet after that. However, the book she wrote about what she'd seen and heard on her travels, titled The Astonishing Ends of the World, apparently had thousands of handwritten copies made in the nation of Mashiro.

In a country where everything was hand-copied, literacy wasn't particularly high, and they didn't even have proper papermaking techniques, that was an unprecedented bestseller.

"Your facial features aren't actually that similar. It's more your manner and… your eyes, I think. Those are strikingly alike."

"My eyes…?"

Nora blinked her golden eyes curiously.

Thanks to its meticulous descriptions, Nokia's book had become a valuable resource for understanding the world beyond Mashiro's borders. But there was one chapter in it that nobody believed.

None other than the chapter on "The Farthest Land, Scarlet."

"Those eyes, brimming with the kind of curiosity that would lead someone to believe a book nobody else did and travel all the way out here."

I said it with a smile. It was no wonder nobody believed it.

Because — what Nokia had written was, in fact, nothing but lies.

Streets lined with houses built entirely of scarlite, thousands of spirit-drawn carriages traveling back and forth, work so highly automated that people had no need to labor themselves, and a great fire dragon who had lived for tens of thousands of years presiding over it all. That was how Nokia had depicted Scarlet: as a dreamland.

In short, she had massively embellished everything.

"You must have been disappointed when you actually arrived and found it wasn't all that impressive?"

"Not at all. The book was certainly exaggerated, but even so, it's been one surprise after another."

Besides, Nora continued.

"I think my great-grandmother… Nokia… wrote those lies on purpose. So that people wouldn't take too much of an interest in this village."

"Ah… that may well be."

Nokia had worried about Scarlet being destroyed by other nations. Rather than try to hide its existence entirely, she must have decided it was better to exaggerate so wildly that no one would believe a word of it.

"Well, people like us who believed it and came anyway do exist, so who knows if it actually worked."

Nora laughed brightly. And she was right. She wasn't the only traveler who'd taken Nokia's book at face value and made the journey. They'd been trickling in, one by one, for the past ten-odd years.

"I think it worked perfectly well."

After all, the people who came to Scarlet were adventurers who believed an absurd tale. Foolish and brave souls, every one of them, cut from the same cloth as Nokia and Nora. Not a single person had come with intent to harm the village or turn a profit. The story was simply too outlandish for anyone with those motives to bother.

"… Then I'm glad."

Nora said, smiling warmly.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"You're laaate!"

"Sorry, I got caught up talking."

Innis stood atop her sofa with her hands on her hips in an imposing stance. Nora and I bowed our heads in unison.

"Honestly… and here I've gone and made the invention of the century. Nora, get things ready."

"Yes, Instructor Innis."

Innis sank deep into her sofa and gave Nora her orders. Nora had taken an interest in Innis's exceptional skill and was now working as something of an assistant to her. The crossbow passed down from Nokia through the generations may have had something to do with it.

Though when Nora had excitedly shown it to its creator, Innis took one look and said "I could make something way better than this piece of junk now," which left Nora rather deflated.

"Well then, Mentor, what you've been waiting for is finally complete."

"Already!? It's only been a little over thirty years since I asked!"

I stared wide-eyed at Innis's words.

What I had asked Innis to build. It was a spaceship.

A vessel to reach the far side of the sky. To my homeland.

Of course, even if it were completed, whether I'd actually go was a separate question. But I at least wanted to know what had become of my homeland, so I'd made the request… I never expected it to be finished this quickly.

"Heheh, I am a genius, after all."

Nora wheeled in something enormous on a cart. A squat, cone-shaped mass about three meters tall, draped in a sheet. Rather small, but perhaps in this world of magic, a spaceship of this size was feasible.

"Go on, Nora, the unveiling!"

"Yes!"

Nora whipped the sheet off with a flourish.

"… What is this?"

I tilted my head at what lay beneath. If I had to describe it in a word, it was a giant stuffed toy made of metal.

"Iron Doll Mark Three, Autonomous Model. Tetsuo-san for short!"

Innis puffed out her chest proudly.

"… Tetsuo-san."

I repeated the name. Where was the "o" even coming from?

"Um, the spaceship? Can I fly in this?"

"Huh? Of course you can't fly in it."

Innis gave me a look of utter exasperation.

"I showed you the project plan last time, didn't I? Nora, the plan."

"Yes, Instructor Innis."

Nora scurried over to the bookshelf, pulled out a thick tome, and carried it back clutched against her chest.

"Here."

She opened it to an extraordinarily complex workflow chart.

"Mentor, you clearly didn't understand any of it, did you… The technologies and inventions needed for a ship that can travel to the far side of the sky, outer space or whatever you call it, number at least this many by my reckoning."

Innis pointed to the rows upon rows of text, but the technical jargon was too dense for me to make much sense of. What I could tell, however, was that the list was staggeringly long.

"And what we've completed is this."

She pointed to the very first item. Just three characters. A simple phrase even I could understand.

"Labor force…?"

"That's right. A labor force that doesn't rest, doesn't tire, and doesn't make mistakes. That's what we need before anything else."

So that was what this was about. I looked at the iron doll again.

"But haven't you been controlling things like this for a while now?"

"Don't lump this in with Marks One and Two. Here we go, Tetsuo-san… activate!"

Innis floated her sofa up and pressed a button on the iron doll's forehead. It hummed to life at once, its eyes glowing blue. Then, stiffly, it stood up.

"Tetsuo-san. Pick up Mentor."

At Innis's command, the iron doll slowly extended its arms toward me. Then it hoisted me up.

"Whoa— hey, Innis, put me down!"

I shouted reflexively, and without Innis having to say a thing, the iron doll gently set me back on the ground.

"Wait… did it just…?"

"Like I said. Iron Doll Mark Three, Autonomous Model. Tetsuo-san for short."

Autonomous. Meaning it thought and moved on its own. That was practically…

"A golem."

I looked up at Tetsuo-san in astonishment.

"And by the way, this uses nothing but enchantment sorcery."

Innis flashed a triumphant smile.

"It's not powered by spirits!?"

"I told you. We need a labor force that doesn't rest, doesn't tire, and doesn't make mistakes. Spirits won't do, and neither will people."

The defining characteristic of enchantment sorcery was that it produced the exact same result no matter who used it or how. Unlike spirits, which always carried the risk of going berserk, a golem driven purely by enchantment sorcery would never err.

I let out a sigh of admiration as I stared at it, and then…

"This is just the first step?"

The realization hit me, and I asked.

"That's right. This one is handy, but it can't do anything without being told, and its judgment is nowhere near a spirit's. It can only handle simple tasks. From here, we'll need to mass-produce these to secure our labor force, then pursue foundational research in each respective field. We need to develop the technology to enable the technology to enable the technology we actually need. You might say that this is… the material for the material for the material for the material for the material for the material. More or less."

The sheer scale of it made my head swim.

"… How long would something like that take?"

"Who knows? Give me about a thousand years and I'll figure something out?"

That was as long as I had been alive up to this point.

For the first time, I was rendered speechless by how casually Innis tossed around such spans of time.