Chapter 461

Upon arriving at the port, they immediately lined up for immigration to enter the Adorarim Kingdom from the seaside.

However, they quickly noticed that the line was moving at an unusually fast pace.

In the countries they had visited before, the process involved checking each person's identification one by one before allowing entry, so with a large number of people, it inevitably took time.

But looking closely at the inspection area, there were only a few soldiers standing guard, and it seemed like people were basically being let through without much hassle.

What could this be? As they tilted their heads in confusion, their turn approached, and they understood the reason.

"Kinda looks like a train station ticket gate, huh?"

"Yeah. Like tapping an electronic money card like Suica, you just press your identification against it to get in."

Exactly. Right before the gate leading from the port into the country, there was a magical tool set up just like an automatic ticket gate at a station. If there was no issue with the identification, the barrier would retract; if there was a problem, it would beep, block the way with the barrier, and call an attendant for questioning.

"As expected of the future. From what I can see, it's constructed in a way that's impossibly complex for our time. Fascinating."

"Come on, Leah. You're blocking the way, so hurry up and move."

"Ah, sorry."

Leah had unconsciously stopped to stare, so Nana pushed her back and forced her forward.

In no time, it was Tatsuro and the others' turn. They pressed their identifications against it with a bit of nervousness.

By the way, Ishtar had a disguised identification prepared for incognito travel, so her status as emperor wouldn't be revealed. Aito and Aika also had identifications made at the Adventurer’s Guild so they could enter towns with Gramps, so no issues there.

The only slight worry was whether identifications from the past would work in the current era-but that turned out to be unfounded, as Tatsuro and the group successfully entered the Adorarim Kingdom without any problems.

Having obtained the stamp proving they entered through proper procedures, they hurried on to the capital, Maron.

They jumped back onto the Flight Palanquin carried by Jeanne.

"Hehe, the capital's called Maron. Sounds delicious, right?"

"Makes you crave Mont Blanc or something."

With Leela and Ishtar showing interest in such words, they chatted about sweets from different worlds, and soon they arrived near their destination.

They disembarked from the Flight Palanquin, and even from this somewhat distant spot, they could see the immense number of people coming and going, as befitting a capital.

As they all walked toward it, this place too seemed to have an automatic ticket gate-like system.

Tatsuro and the others flowed into the capital at a smooth pace.

"Since the magical tool judges it, we don't get stared at or surprised every time because of our adventurer ranks, which is nice."

"Yeah, that does stand out a bit awkwardly. Anyway..."

The attire of the residents they had seen up to this point hadn't changed much even after nearly 230 years.

The town was surrounded by sturdy walls, so from the outside, they predicted the townscape hadn't changed much either.

But once they entered and looked around, buildings like skyscrapers lined the streets, and enormous oval-shaped objects about the size of a fantastical bus floated slightly off the ground and glided along, carrying several people inside.

Even more surprisingly, unlike the moving ground they had seen in Heldamdo's major cities before, people were freely gliding over it without such a thing.

It wasn't like they had rollers attached to their shoes; looking closely, their soles were floating slightly off the ground, and some force seemed to be acting between the ground and the soles, allowing free movement forward, backward, left, and right.

"It seems there's a secret in the ground, the soles, and the substances people are riding on. Hmm, this is... a compound magic circle mixing three attributes? It's a bit inefficient and forceful, not to my taste, but interesting that it can be done that way."

"Come on, Leah, you're in the way of traffic there. Over here~"

"Okaay."

Even as Nana pulled her by the hand, Leah's eyes scanned the surroundings, checking where and what magical tools were being used.

"If there's a mechanism in the shoes too, does that mean we can't move like that?"

"Looks fun. Wonder if we can buy them somewhere? Huh? What's that sound?"

This time, a "beep beep beep" like an electronic tone came from nearby.

Wondering what it was, everyone turned their gaze that way, and one of the passersby, a man, started rummaging through his leather bag and pulled out a box-shaped object about the size of a thin dictionary.

Then, pressing the largest button in the center, a person's voice came out from it.

"Is that maybe a cell phone?"

"...No, it might be closer to a transceiver."

After watching for a bit, Tatsuro said what he felt, and Leah nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. Compared to the smartphones you showed us before, Brother, it seems a bit underdeveloped. Apparently, it can't transmit both sides' words simultaneously; they have to take turns speaking one at a time. Also, with that output, I think the communicable range is limited to within this town."

But in the near future-perhaps in a few years-technology like cell phones that allow mutual conversation with people far away would likely be developed, Leah concluded.

"Well, sightseeing the town is fine, but to get an idea of places that might have become World Force pools, as per the original plan, let's split into a few groups and search."

As Leela said, there was no collaborator here like before to tell them where the World Force pool was.

So they had no choice but to search on their own.

For that, Tatsuro and the others divided into five groups to investigate likely spots, suspicious places, strange areas, and so on.

The groupings were: Tatsuro and Ai, Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi. Cardina with Aito and Aika. Jeanne and Leela. Nana and Leah. Athena and Ishtar.

Since each group included someone with either Spirit Eye, All-Seeing Eye, or Dispel Magic, they should be able to notice anomalies easily.

"Also, Leah, feel free to observe the surroundings and magical tools as you like, or make detours or go to bookstores. We're here for technological development too. So, this is your budget. If there's something you want, buy it as necessary expenses from there. If it's not enough, report it properly. I'll pay later."

"Eh? Ah, thank you, Brother."

Tatsuro was a bit surprised that Leah accepted it straightforwardly, but for her, from their long association, she knew that Tatsuro with this expression wouldn't back down no matter what, so she decided not to hold back.

"“Tatsu-nii. Bring out Mameda. We're going for a walk-”"

"Eh? Well... as long as it's the small size, I guess. But this isn't playtime, so listen properly to Big Sis Cardina, okay?"

"“Yes”"

Tatsuro had felt that being called master forever by the beautiful boy angel and beautiful girl devil had a criminal vibe, so he took the opportunity during the air travel to tell Aito and Aika to change how they addressed him.

As a result, these two... or rather, this one, started calling Tatsuro 'Tatsu-nii' and Ai 'A-nee', basically adding 'nee' to the women.

That made him wonder about Nana's 'Father' or Athena's 'Dad' and such, but since it was too late, he decided to leave those as is.

Tatsuro secretly summoned Mameda in a shrunken state with Body Shrinkage and handed him over to the two reaching out.

First, Aito received him and hugged the small wolf pup tightly.

While being healed by that sight, Tatsuro and the others decided on a meeting place and scattered in different directions to start their actions.

A few hours later. At the appointed time, the gathered Tatsuro and others took lodging and assembled in the room taken for Tatsuro and Ai to discuss.

But everyone seemed to have struck out, with no likely places found.

"On my end, I happened to stop by a small privately run magical tool shop and repair place, and the old dwarf there turned out to be a former technical director of the merchant guild, so I learned a lot about the technological level of this era."

"Oh? Good job. So, how was it?"

"It seems the cutting-edge technology now is up to four compound magic circles at most. But currently, only up to three are stable, and four is still in the development stage, unstable."

The more types that can be incorporated into a compound magic circle, the smaller the circle becomes and the less magical power it requires, leading to miniaturization and energy efficiency.

Also, it allows for phenomena that couldn't be produced with the old-style magic circles, which were like multiple single-attribute ones connected in parallel, so it's quite a technological revolution.

Sensory-wise, the original era had large, high-consumption ones that could only produce rough phenomena.

The current era has small, low-consumption ones that can produce delicate phenomena.

"That said, in this direction, the inscription style was a new idea I hadn't thought of, which is a gain, but pursuing this further probably won't lead to new technologies. So next, I plan to investigate other directions-for example, new materials or unique magical studies unique to this era."

"Got it. Leah, focus on that mainly. Hmm... anyway, today's harvest is slim."

"It can't be helped. With this number of people, we're thoroughly covering the entire capital of a country. There are probably still places we haven't reached."

"Yeah, that's true. Guess we just have to keep at it steadily a bit more."

With Ai's words, they called it a day.

But the next day and the day after, while Leah alone gained new knowledge, they got no solid information on World Force.

"Hey, Leela. Are you sure this is the right country? I think we've covered pretty much everything, but..."

"Yeah. Indeed, in the near future, a massive World Force pool should occur here, but no signs at all... But the location should be correct. So starting tomorrow, let's change our approach."

"And that is? What approach?"

"That would be, Ai-chan, when World Force starts gathering, often some abnormal phenomena begin to occur as well. If we can find something like a precursor, we might naturally arrive at the answer."

"So ya mean, instead of searchin' for World Force, we check if any abnormal phenomena or strange events are happenin' in this country?"

"Yes. Then, asking around like 'Have there been any weird incidents?' might turn up someone who knows."

"...Yeah. Wandering aimlessly hasn't worked. Starting tomorrow, let's try gathering information by asking around."

Thus, from the next day, instead of walking around, Tatsuro and the others went around interviewing the residents living in this country.

Since it was interviewing, the teams that couldn't converse without Ishtar nearby were absorbed into Ishtar's group.

As a result of walking around from morning to evening asking questions, most were things that could be dismissed as imagination or coincidence, but they succeeded in hearing one intriguing story from the residents.

That was-.

"Spirit away-over the past few thousand years, there have been several cases where people suddenly disappear and go missing."

"That came up on my end too. In a city this large with so many people, a few disappearances a year isn't strange, but..."

"The way they disappear is unnatural."

Following up on Ishtar's words, Nana explained the unnatural aspects as far as she understood.

To wit: Just moments ago, they were walking hand in hand, but in the instant they looked away, their lover was gone.

They forgot something at the entrance and hurried back for a few seconds, and the child who was supposed to be waiting outside vanished.

A colleague drinking together at a tavern disappeared the moment they closed their eyes from sleepiness. Asking the owner or other customers, no one saw them leave.

The driver of a Veicle (the bus-like vehicle Tatsuro and the others saw for transporting people) somehow vanished from the seat while waiting for someone to cross.

And so on, over the thousands of years from past to present, such bizarre disappearances have occurred at an average of about three per year.

But in this metropolis where hundreds of thousands live now, three people disappearing a year doesn't concern anyone outside the involved parties; they attach relatively realistic reasons like must have been a mistake, kidnapped, ran away because they hated work... and so on, and don't pay much mind.

In fact, non-strange disappearances, including debt-related night flights, occur at a pace of hundreds per year.

However, it's certain that people have witnessed those eerie ways of vanishing, and as a strange urban legend-the spirit away incidents-most citizens have heard of it if they're from the country.

For occult enthusiasts, it's one of the first incidents they'd bite on.

"Indeed, just hearing the stories, it's creepy mysterious cases, but if told it's just kidnappers or overlooked or coincidences piling up, it's at a level where you could accept that."

"But since we ain't gathered other suspicious info, maybe investigatin' that for now ain't bad?"

"But how do we investigate?"

"Hmm. Soon in this country, a large-scale anomaly due to a World Force pool is confirmed by divine info to occur. So, if those spirit away incidents are related to our matter, I'm betting another disappearance will happen soon, what do you think?"

To Tatsuro's opinion, each gave positive responses like yeah, maybe.

But to do that, they'd want to spread a large-scale Detection Magic.

However, to do so, they could predict it would be necessary to get permission from higher-ups in this country, or it might lead to trouble later.

After all, it would be openly using large-scale magic within the city.

"So, looks like we need to go meet some bigwig?"

"Probably. But for you guys, Tatsuro-kun, as world-top-rank adventurers, getting an audience should be easy. For someone leading a country, they'd surely want to get to know such talent."

"When you put it that way, accepting the rank back then was the right call."

"Yeah. Then, tomorrow, first let's see if we can talk to this country's top. Maybe they have info on the spirit away incidents that only the upper echelons know."

"Ooh. Things are gettin' interesting-"

"Well then, first"

Up until now, they had just been walking around without knowing anything, but with a direction finally set, their dropping motivation started to recover, and Tatsuro and the others enthusiastically began discussing tomorrow's schedule.