I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 12 Page 8

  Apparently, the direction of the story changed to suit the wishes of the heroine herself. For the Nyanyan here and now, the most important issue to address was probably her uncle’s coup. That was a hairy enough situation as it was, and I could certainly see how she’d need a hero. But just because she wanted to thwart the coup didn’t change the fact that Atlantis was going to sink in three days. And in that sense, what I had to do and what I came here to save hadn’t changed. Now I just had to do something about the coup on top of all that...

  With newfound resolution, I clenched my hands into determined fists.

  ▽

  A little while later... Actually, not much time had passed at all, but every second felt like its own little eternity when we were racing against the clock. The whole city was going to sink in three days, and we had to retake the throne from usurpers and get Nyanyan crowned before all that. If we didn’t, there would be no way to break the curse on Sherlyn. Plus, if we actually got Nyanyan on the throne, she’d surely be of use to us when it came time to save the Atlantians.

  As for the crown, when Nyanyan first spotted Sherlyn wearing it, she immediately accused us of being thieving spies and her uncle’s henchmen. We managed to calm her down by telling her that we’d stolen it from her uncle so we could bring it to her... Sherlyn had just accidentally ended up wearing it.

  “So, that being the case, we want you to take the throne so we can save our friend too.”

  “Hmm... Well, I suppose if you were on my uncle’s side, you could have just made him the king and removed the curse that way. Very well. I’ll believe you. As long as you save me, I don’t care whether you’re really spies or not,” said Nyanyan.

  “Okay, well, we’ve only just arrived in this kingdom and don’t know much about the situation. Could you fill us in?”

  “I suppose. Let’s see...”

  Based on what Nyanyan told us, things had started five days ago when the previous king—her father—passed away in his old age. Her uncle—Boboza—was the king’s younger brother and had had his eye on the throne for a long time, but only showed his true colors after his brother’s death. Nyanyan, who’d never expected such treachery, was caught completely off guard and was easily captured in the coup.

  “Oh? You stood against his rule and all he did was imprison you?” Corona asked in a dubious tone.

  “‘All he did’? You mean...”

  “This Boboza man was trying the usurp the throne, right? Why wouldn’t he kill the princess on the spot? I can’t imagine there being a reason to keep her alive.”

  A reason to keep her alive...? Maybe there was something, so I asked Nyanyan about it.

  “My uncle wanted to make me give up the details about how to return to the past, a secret only shared with the true ruler of Atlantis. Without that knowledge and the crown, it’s pretty much impossible to be accepted as the king of Atlantis by either the council or the people.”

  According to Nyanyan, a significant portion of Atlantis’s prosperity was attributable to their ability to return to the past. For example, if they were conducting experiments on the development of a new technology and something went wrong, they could infinitely go back in time and repeat the whole process with those mistakes in mind—essentially writing off all their failures for successes. Her father had returned to the past for the sake of medical advancements a little too often, however, which had unnaturally advanced his age.

  “Everyone said my father was a splendid king...” Nyanyan said with a forlorn expression. She fell silent for a while, but eventually raised her head again. “Anyway, that’s how it is.”

  “Thanks, I think I’ve got the gist of it now. It sounds like they’d be reluctant to kill you.”

  On the other hand, we didn’t have any other trump cards to play. After seeing the soldiers chase Nyanyan like that, it seemed a large part of the kingdom—at least politically—had sided with Boboza. It would probably be best if we considered how thorough Boboza had been in laying the groundwork the coup. Now, as for us...

  “Nyanyan.”

  “Hm? What is it?”

  “Do you have any friends? You know, allies that might side with you?”

  “Any allies?”

  Nyanyan put a pensive hand to her chin. She hemmed and hawed out loud for a while. Then, finally...

  “I don’t know.”

  “You... don’t know?”

  “I’m a princess. My father always praised me and everyone around me would bend to my beck and call. So if you ask me... I can’t really name anyone specifically.”

  “Truly raised like a princess, I see,” Sherlyn said in a half-jesting, half-troubled way.

  And it was something of a problem. If anyone and everyone had been Nyanyan’s ally simply because she was the princess, it would be impossible to tell where their real loyalties lay now.

  “What will you do, young man? You said not to attack earlier, but I could just beat up this Boboza man and his henchmen. The best way to quell rebellion is with force, after all.”

  Well, she wasn’t totally wrong. Boboza had been the first one to use force in his power-hungry quest for the throne, so it wouldn’t be totally inappropriate to respond in kind... But just then, Nyanyan seemed to think of something.

  “Aha!”

  “What’s up?”

  “We were talking this and that about sides a moment ago, but I know someone who just might prove to be a powerful ally.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Nyanyan then pointed directly up into the blue sky overhead and said...

  “King Laputa!”

  “Laputa? As in... the movie?”

  Ha! I may not have known about Atlantis, but I definitely knew that one. Wait, that was real...?

  “I know that might be the first thing you think of when you hear that name, Rekka, but Laputa is a reference to the flying island in Gulliver’s Travels.”

  “Oh, okay.” I nodded unthinkingly at the explanation Satsuki whispered in my ear, but then turned to look at her. “But wasn’t Gulliver’s Travels a work of fiction?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her unfaltering answer nearly bowled me over, but I guess that didn’t really tell me what I needed to know. The legend of Atlantis had turned out to be true, so were we about to find out the same thing about Laputa? It didn’t seem like Nyanyan had any reason to lie.

  “All right, let’s go meet the Laputian king. Where is he?”

  “He’s always in the Great Library of the Heavens in the flying city of Laputa.”

  “The Great Library of the Heavens?”

  That was where Nyanyan had told us to go when we met her in the sunken temple. If I recalled correctly, she’d said someone there would know how to get us back to the future. I guess she must’ve meant the king of Laputa.

  “Are we going to Laputa then, young man?”

  “Yeah. It’s better than shedding any unnecessary blood. And besides, we need to visit this library in order to figure out how to get home anyway.” With that much settled, I turned back to Nyanyan. “So, how do you get to this Laputa place?”

  “There are airships... but they’re probably being watched right now.”

  Airships were exactly what they sounded like—boats that sailed through the skies. Boboza probably wanted to keep Nyanyan from fleeing the city, so it made perfect sense he’d be keeping an eye on them. That said, we’d definitely need one with this many people in our party. We had the option of flight magic, but it wasn’t really practical under the circumstances. We had more people who couldn’t fly than could, so it would mean multiple trips or leaving people behind.

  “Okay, let’s go get us one of those airships. Can you show us where they are, Nyanyan?”

  “Certainly. But first...”

  “What is it?”

  “Where’s my drink? I’ve been waiting ages.”

  “...”

  It seemed we’d have to get our hands on something else before the airship.

&n
bsp; Okay, to be fair, staying hydrated is important. When I took a poll, it seemed the great escape had left all of our throats rather dry. So we took a small, stealthy detour to wet our whistles before sneaking our way to the airdock with Nyanyan’s guidance. Of course, everyone had Harissa’s invisibility magic cast on them.

  “Those are the airships?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Nyanyan confirmed.

  Said ships were small, dark gray vessels that could seat seven or eight people. They were also quite exquisite artifacts, with translucent roofs and delicate wings on either side of them.

  “Is that iron? The color is kind of...”

  “It might be made of bronze instead. Actually, that roof doesn’t really look like glass, either... Maybe it’s some kind of acrylic?” Satsuki was also looking at the airship with a rather dubious expression.

  “Bronze, sure, but does acrylic even exist in this time period? That said, I guess producing anything like this would take some serious tech I hadn’t expected to see here...” Chelsea echoed, voicing her questions to no one in particular.

  “Come to think of it, the floor of the temple was exceptionally smooth, but it was stone. Somehow, I get the feeling this is altogether different technology,” said Hibiki.

  “Is that true, Nyanyan?” I asked. “Or is this thing Altlantian too?”

  “Nope. The airships were gifted to us by the king of Laputa. Without them, we wouldn’t have a way to get there, after all.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said with an accepting nod and looked around once more.

  There were ten airships total, parked in two rows of five ships each. A long strip led up to the two ships in the front. It looked like they would accelerate down it like a runway before taking off.

  “So, uh, how do these things work?” I asked.

  “They’ll start if you set the key on the ignition stand,” Nyanyan explained.

  “And where are the keys?”

  “They’re stored in that facility.”

  She was pointing over to a single-story building that wasn’t all that big. Maybe it was just an office or something? Anyway, the real problem was the guards surrounding it. There was a whole crowd of ’em... No, I should say there was a wall. The soldiers stood two or three deep and encircled the whole building.

  “What do you think?” I asked, turning to Hibiki, who was observing the building through her binoculars.

  “Looks tough. You used invisibility magic when you saved Nyanyan, right? We have to take into account they may have figured that out by now. From what I can see through the window, the inside is equally packed with guards. You’d be discovered the moment you busted in.”

  Invisibility was great, but it simply meant that people couldn’t see us; it didn’t change the fact that we were there. If we got surrounded, even invisible, there would be no escape.

  “It’d be over just like that...”

  “If all we have to do is sneak onto the airships, then I think we could pull it off. Since they won’t move without the keys, the guards are all focused on watching the building.”

  Now that she mentioned it, it certainly did look like the coast was clear over by the ships. That being the case, it’d be more efficient to have a small group go and steal the keys while everyone else boarded the ships and waited for us. That would simplify everything and reduce the risks we were running. Now, the only thing left to figure out was how to nab those keys...

  “Come to think of it, Sherlyn...”

  “Yes?”

  “You mentioned earlier that stealing cell keys would be child’s play for you. Does the same go for airship keys?”

  “Hmm... As long as I could spot them and there was at least a single window open in the building, then yes,” Sherlyn answered casually as she twirled a finger in the air.

  “An open window, huh? Hibiki, you see any?”

  “No... I see windows, but none open. They’re all shut tight.”

  “Okay, what about the keys? Do you see those?”

  “I don’t see anything particularly key-like, but I don’t know what an airship key looks like to begin with.”

  Fair. Actually, Nyanyan had said we needed to “set the key on the ignition stand,” not “insert the key in the keyhole.” Maybe this was something unusual after all.

  “Nyanyan, can you come here a sec?”

  “What?”

  “Can you borrow Hibiki’s binoculars and tell me if you can spot the keys anywhere through one of the windows?”

  “Binoculars? You mean that thing that girl was just holding up to her face? You’re going to let me borrow it?” Nyanyan asked, excitedly looking between me and the binoculars Hibiki was holding.

  It seemed she’d been interested in them ever since Hibiki pulled them out. Hibiki didn’t object, and she graciously handed them over to Nyanyan, who immediately peered through the lenses like she’d seen Hibiki do.

  “Ooh, this is amazing! You can see faraway things so clearly!”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s great! Just keep it down! Even if you’re invisible, people can still hear you... Now, see those keys anywhere?”

  “Hmm... Oh, there they are. The second window from the right.”

  “I’m gonna need a little more than that... What do they look like?”

  “What? They’re the round balls sitting there next to the wall.”

  “Balls?”

  I wanted to see this for myself, so I asked Nyanyan to return the binoculars.

  “Hrm...”

  “Um, you kind of have to let go.”

  She was rather reluctant to hand them over, but I eventually got them back safely and held them up to my eyes. I looked through the second window from the right... And sure enough, there were some round, stone-like objects neatly lined up against the wall just like she’d said.

  “Take a look, Sherlyn.”

  I handed the binoculars to her next.

  “Let’s see... Oh, that’s them? There’s ten in total. That lines up with the number of airships, so that seems to check out. I can steal them as long as the window’s open.”

  That was the real problem now. Considering how well guarded the place was, it wasn’t like we could just walk up to the building and crack one open. Really, I wanted to keep as much distance as possible and maybe come up with some way to get one of the guards to open a window...

  “Hmph, my turn! I would like another turn!” Nyanyan tugged at Sherlyn’s sleeve and whined as she fanned her face with a hand.

  Looking around, she wasn’t the only one fanning herself, either. Satsuki, Iris, and the others were all looking rather pink in the cheeks, and I found myself tugging at my collar without even realizing it.

  “You know, it’s pretty hot here...”

  Maybe it was because we were out in the middle of the ocean, but the bright and beaming sun was pretty intense. You couldn’t stay out in it for too long. Nyanyan and the other people of Atlantis were all pretty tan, but even they too... Huh. I just had an idea.

  “Hey, can anyone here use magic that creates a bunch of fire? Or more specifically, heat?”

  Everyone tilted their heads at my sudden question, but Satsuki then hesitantly raised her hand.

  “I’m pretty sure I can find something like that with my Omniscient Magic, but why?”

  “I might have a plan.”

  And I quickly explained it to everyone.

  ▽

  Satsuki, Sherlyn, Corona, and I hung back while everyone else stealthily boarded the two airships at the front of the line. There were a couple of guards patrolling the area, but Iris and Corona knocked them all out before they even had a chance to blow our cover. We then hid their bodies in the shadows for now.

  “How’s it looking, Satsuki?” I asked.

  “It should work just fine. Much like how a lens focuses light, I’ll be gathering the heat in the area and concentrating it on that building.”

  “Got it. You ready to go too, Sherlyn?”


  “You betcha.”

  Sherlyn nodded as she continued to stare through the binoculars at the building, her gaze utterly fixed. Even without binoculars, my eyes were glued to that window too. And before too long...

  “It’s open!” Satsuki cheered.

  And it looked like she was right.

  What we had done was extremely simple: we raised the temperature inside the building until one of the guards inside got hot enough to open a window. Atlantis was hot enough as it was, so turning up the heat on a closed-up building would sooner or later become too much to bear. Sooner, in this case.

  “Sherlyn!”

  “Leave it to me!”

  With an energetic cheer and the binoculars still held up to her face, Sherlyn raised her free hand like a gun and pointed her index finger at the building.

  “Mark!”

  There, two small beams of light fired from the tip of her finger in rapid succession. Both sailed through the air and went right in the open window. Then...

  “Steal!”

  She then curled all her fingers together and drew her clenched fist closer like she was pulling in a rope. There was immediately a commotion coming from the building... and two strange spheres flying our way. They looked just like the airship keys Nyanyan had pointed out to me earlier.

  “All right, got them!”

  They flew right to Sherlyn like they were being sucked into her hands.

  “Well? What do you think of my magic? I use Mark to lock on to a target and Steal to pull it towards me. Useful for a phantom thief, no?”

  Sherlyn fiddled with the round keys in her hand like a magician, explaining her trick to us with a proud smile.

  “Nice one, Sherlyn! Now, Satsuki, Corona, get us to the airships with your flight magic!”

  “All right!”

  “Understood.”

  “Not so fast, Rekka. Don’t forget to take one of the keys.”

  “Oh, right. Thanks.”

  We’d have to take two airships, so it was important that we each had a key when we split up. I took one from Sherlyn and then flew over with Satsuki to the ships. Corona and Sherlyn followed behind us.

  The soldiers who had been on guard spent a while running around like chickens with their heads cut off after what happened, but someone eventually realized that the keys being gone meant that the airships were being stolen. All the guards came pouring out of the building after that... Just about as I was boarding the airship on the right, and Corona and Sherlyn on the one on the left.