“I’m afraid that seems like the more likely outcome,” he said wryly.
“All right, Ludwin,” I said. “Genia’s said her piece. Now I think it’s your turn, don’t you?”
“…Y-Yes, sire!”
Ludwin and Genia faced one another.
Ludwin had turned a bright shade of red, but Genia’s cheeks might have turned just a touch more pink. Though Ludwin was the taller of the two if you were to compare, with him freezing up from tension, they looked about the same. I worried if he was going to be all right, given how tense he looked, but this was the handsome Captain of the Guard who had led an army of tens of thousands. He quickly composed himself.
“Genia. Will you be my wife?”
“…Are you sure, Luu?” she asked. “I don’t think I’m really noble wife material, you know?”
“I know,” he said. “Still, I want to have you at my side forever.”
“You’ve got odd tastes… But, sure. Okay. Take good care of me, Darling.”
Then, the two of them shook hands.
I had to think, Shouldn’t you hug instead? but… well, this was more like them. They looked happy, so I wasn’t about to say anything. I was glad the matter had been settled quietly.
“Whew… Is that everything neatly taken care of?” I asked.
“…No, sire.” The moment I tried to relax, Ludwin said that with a deeply-troubled look. “Not yet.”
He’d looked so happy just a moment ago. What happened in that one instant?
“I’d forgotten up until now, too, but… Have you forgotten why we came here today?” Ludwin added, his face still looking troubled.
Ah… come to think of it, he was right. I had completely forgotten, but we hadn’t come here to see her inventions.
That was when Ludwin bonked Genia on the head with his fist.
“Ow?!” she cried. “Luu, I don’t want domestic violence when we just got engaged.”
“You idiot!” he shouted. “Listen, just apologize to His Majesty along with me!”
Having said that, Ludwin grabbed Genia’s head and pressed it to the floor. He then bowed low enough himself that his head scrapped the floor, too. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was this country’s style of double kowtow.
Ludwin apologized as he held Genia’s head down. “My… fiancée has done something truly outrageous this time…”
“Ow, that hurts, Luu,” she complained. “You’re pulling my hair out.”
“Genia, be quiet! I humbly, humbly, beseech you, sire, have mercy.”
No, he didn’t have to apologize so fervently… I wasn’t that bothered by it, you know. “Ludwin, Genia, both of you raise your heads. I’m not particularly looking to find fault here.”
“Sire… Thank you!” Ludwin cried.
“Ahh, but I am curious about it.” I sat down, looking Genia straight in the eyes and asked her, “Tell me, would you, Genia? Why did you take those dragon bones?”
You may remember, this had happened about half a year ago.
When we’d dug a hole for a sedimentation pond as part of the process of installing a water system in our major cities, we’d discovered a large number of monster bones. From among them, a full set of giant dragon bones had just up and vanished.
Because I had heard that dragons who died while bearing a grudge could come back as skull dragons, I had worried for a while that that might be the cause. Had that been the case, however, the skull dragon would have spread its miasma. Given that Parnam had stayed peaceful and quiet, that possibility had seemed unlikely.
My next suspicion was that someone had stolen them, but I had no inkling as to why they would. If they’d still had magic in them, they might be useful as a magic catalyst or an ingredient for crafting equipment, but these bones had been fully drained and lacking that value. In fact, it was precisely because there was nothing to be done with them that I had been keeping them in storage to eventually display in a museum. So, in the end, people had said a collector must have made off with them.
While it was a strange case, I hadn’t seen it leading to anything too major, so it had gradually faded from my memory… or it would have, if the truth hadn’t come to light just the other day.
There had been a single piece of paper mixed in with Ludwin’s work papers. It had simply said: “Dear Luu, I’m gonna take the dragon bones, handle the paperwork plzkthx — Genia.”
Yes. The one who had taken the dragon bones was Genia.
She had apparently used the golems to carry them off. I suppose it could be said that the way she’d only turned in a single piece of paper saying she’d be doing it, then went ahead and did it without waiting for a reply, was very much like her. That paper had been turned in while things were a real mess, so it had gotten mixed up with some other documents.
The other day, when that paper had finally been discovered, learning his childhood friend was the criminal, Ludwin had come to prostrate himself before me in apology. Now, today, to confirm the location of the bones, we had come to visit Genia’s dungeon laboratory together.
And so, we at last learned where the missing bones had gone, but…
““Whaa?!”” we cried out in surprise.
The bones had changed completely… or rather, they looked totally different.
When asked where the bones were, Genia had led us inside the tent that covered half of this huge space. When we’d gone inside, my eyes nearly jumped out of my skull at the sight of that giant mechanical dragon with its shining, metallic body. The moment I’d seen that thing which was only fit to be called a mechadragon, the main theme of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla with its low and heavy sounds started to play in my head.
No, it wasn’t that big, and it was only twenty meters tall at most, but its form was just so far away from anything that felt real.
While I was standing there dumbfounded, Genia proudly began to explain, “I call this baby ‘Mechadra.’ I put armor and parts from wild creatures and monsters on top of the skeleton of a dragon, then threw in some mystery parts found in a dungeon to flesh it out and make my own mechanical dragon.”
Genia was cheerfully explaining in a singsong tone, but… I dunno. The materials from monsters and mysterious parts from the dungeons were giving me nothing but a bad feeling.
Liscia was still gaping, and Ludwin looked like he might faint.
I asked Genia, “This thing won’t go on a rampage, right?”
“Ahaha,” she laughed. “There’s no way it’d do that.”
Then Genia approached Mechadra, touching the underside of its foot lightly.
“I mean, it doesn’t even move.”
“Huh? It doesn’t?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “I think the outer frame is pretty well complete, but it lacks the all important control system to send orders to all the parts. The way it is… it’s just a glorified scarecrow.”
What are you, the “I’m gonna kill you nooooow!!” guy…? I thought, making a reference no one was going to get.
I saw the situation now. She had made a mechanical dragon, and that was all well and good, but the program and circuits to operate it didn’t exist. It was apparently something she had built to study the workings of living creatures’ joints, and she had never intended for it to move. But, well, much as that should have been a given with the level of technology in this world, when Genia was involved, my sense for that was numbed, you know.
Genia was moving one of Mechadra’s foot talon parts up and down with one hand. “Look, it moves smoothly like this. Even without power, you can make it move.”
“Yeah, that’s amazing,” I said. “It’s amazing, but… what did you go and make this thing for…?”