“Well, we’ve got Ludwin here, after all,” I said.
I hadn’t brought a bodyguard on this outing. Aisha had been concerned and made a fuss about it, but with the Captain of the Royal Guard around, I figured it would be fine. Besides… I wanted to keep this quiet, so the fewer people involved, the better.
From the air, the Arcs fiefdom had been stained in fall colors by the leaves that had fallen from the trees. There were a lot of fields and pastures, too, so the scenery that spread out before us had a feeling of tranquility to it.
This was just based on my own senses, but this continent, which was a bit larger than China had been in the Three Kingdoms Period, had a considerable difference in its climate between the north and the south.
The further north you went, the hotter, and the further south you went, the colder it became. That was true even within this country, and in the southernmost reaches, the snow had already begun to fly. The Arcs fiefdom, being more to the north, was still experiencing a temperate autumn climate.
“Wish we could just take it easy and have a picnic or something,” I grumbled.
“I know the feeling, really I do, but we’ll do it another time, okay?” Liscia gently rebuked me. “We came here today for a reason, didn’t we?”
“I know that, but, hey, it’s such a nice day out…”
“Ah, this is it, sire,” Ludwin interrupted. “Please, take us down here.”
Following Ludwin’s directions, we landed the gondola and disembarked at the edge of a little forest. Even once I was out of the gondola, all I could see was trees. Nothing looked out of the ordinary about this forest.
I ordered the gondola’s driver to wait for us here, then asked Ludwin, “Is it really in the forest?”
“Yes,” he said. “Though, to be precise, it’s not ‘in,’ but ‘under.’”
“Under?” I asked.
“I think it would be faster to just show you.” With that said, Ludwin set off toward the forest. “Now, sire, princess, please follow me.”
Trailing after Ludwin, Liscia and I walked through the forest side by side. As a precaution against wild creatures, I had the mouse dolls that I used while providing relief to the dark elf village scouting the area, but there didn’t seem to be any wild animals that were a threat. It was a small forest, and I could tell that people entered it often. With the leaves having fallen from the trees, it was bright inside the forest, which provided good visibility, too.
If it came down to it, I figured Ludwin and Liscia could handle any problems that arose.
Ludwin was ahead of us, clearing any branches that would be in our way with his sword and shield, so all we had to do was walk behind him. While walking on the fallen leaves, I started to get into the mood for a picnic again. I naturally started singing a song that matched the atmosphere.
“That’s a nice song. What is it?” Liscia asked me.
“The theme to the first movie of a monster anime that every person in my country would know,” I said.
“…The one thing I do know is that what you just said made no sense to me.” Liscia just sort of rolled her eyes, but then she suddenly took on a more thoughtful look. I wondered what was up, but the next moment, she wrapped her arm around mine. “How’s that? Does it feel a bit more like a picnic now?”
Seeing Liscia’s shy smile, I said…
“…I’m getting weirdly sweaty now.”
“Why?!” she exclaimed.
“Because you’re too cute, and it’s making my heart race.”
“Huh?! O-Oh… My heart is, too,” she flirted back.
Ludwin came to a stop. “This is the place, sire, princess.”
Ludwin turned around, so I quickly backed up. Then I noticed something I hadn’t up until now. There was something big right in front of us. It was…
“…A garage?” I asked. That seemed like the only way to describe the rectangular object.
It was moss-covered, but it seemed to be made of something like concrete, and had a shutter on one side. It was big enough for an average car to fit into. While they sometimes had technologies that seemed far ahead of their time, this world was at a pre-industrial revolution level on average, so this design seemed out of place.
While I was reacting with confusion, Ludwin shook his head. “It’s not a garage. This isn’t tall enough for a horse-drawn carriage to enter, after all.”
In this world, the common assumption would be that a garage was for holding carriages. In my world, a van might not have fit inside, but an ordinary car would have easily fit. Not that there was any point in trying to explain… but, come to think of it, that made the design of this building all the harder to understand.
“Well, what is it?” I asked, and Ludwin responded with all seriousness.
“The entrance to a dungeon, sire.”
Dungeons.
These labyrinthine places had their own unique and mysterious ecology.
They were also the one place where monsters had been confirmed to exist before the coming of the Demon Lord.
When I had been using my Little Musashibos to play at being an adventurer, I had heard about them from Dece, Juno, and the other members of their party. But the one they had told me about had been a cave, like you would imagine. I hadn’t heard anything about this sort of clearly artificial entrance.
I presented my doubts, but apparently dungeons came in many forms.
“There are all sorts of different dungeons,” Liscia explained. “They appear everywhere from the plains to the forest to the mountains, and even to the depths of the sea. They can be like caves inside, or paved with stone like the basement of a castle, or even a bizarre space with metal walls.”
I vaguely recalled that the jewels we used for the Jewel Voice Broadcast had come from inside a dungeon. I’d heard of other such pieces of over-technology coming out of dungeons, too, so it wasn’t strange to find a dungeon itself was made out of over-technology… maybe?
“Hey, wait. How did people even discover undersea dungeons?” I asked.
Liscia said, “There are races that work underwater, and some of the undersea dungeons have air inside, so in those cases, people go down to them inside these big bell-like things.”
Oh, a diving bell, huh? That was a sort of diving machine shaped like a bell that you continuously pumped air into as it sank. I only knew them from manga, but… I kind of wanted to try riding in one.
“Well, are there any monsters in this dungeon, then?” I asked.
Ludwin shook his head. “No. You could call this a ruined dungeon. The monsters and creatures inside have long since been exterminated.”
“It’s already been cleared, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes. And now, this is where a person from the House of Maxwell, a family of eccentrics that were given the rights to this ruined dungeon and turned it into a laboratory, currently lives.”
Ludwin turned and spoke into a metal tube next to the entrance.
“Genia! It’s me! Ludwin Arcs! You rarely go outside, so I doubt you’re not there, so respond if you are!”
It must have been a speaking tube he was shouting into. They’d had them on the battleship Albert, too. And wait, was this person he was calling a shut-in, I wondered? This person called Genia (based on that name, was she a girl, maybe?).
Coming from the speaking tube…
Bang, crash!…there was a sound of something falling over, followed by a young woman’s voice.
“Ow… Hey, Big Brother Luu. What’s up?”
“No, not ‘What’s up?’” Ludwin shot back. “There was a pretty loud crash just now. Are you okay?”
“I was surprised when you suddenly called out to me, so I accidentally knocked some stuff over,” Genia said. “Well, it wasn’t dangerous chemicals, so it’s all good.”