Chapter 48: The Boy and the Scrap Metal

Now then. We'd been about to discuss how to get ourselves out of this situation...

"Seriously, you guys are idiots, aren't you? It's precisely when things are desperate that you need to think things through more carefully. So, sit in seiza."

"Huh...?"

"You do know what seiza is, right?"

"Um, yeah, I know what it is..."

"Then sit in seiza."

After we'd finished explaining everything that had happened, including the mechanical soldiers marching toward the Great Forest, we'd somehow ended up sitting formally on our knees in seiza.

"First of all, just think about it logically. Tree soldiers are certainly powerful, but... that's exactly why it's impossible to turn every single plant in the Great Forest into a tree soldier and control them all at once."

"Huh? Really? Was that how it worked?"

Now that he mentioned it, that made sense. No matter how powerful a spell might be, you couldn't even cast it without a corresponding amount of magical energy.

My own magic was powerful, but I still had to charge it with magical energy before I could activate it. If I used too much, I'd run out.

"It was possible back when Big Sis Pahal was still living in the forest—in other words, when the sacred treasure was still there. That treasure was the cornerstone of the Great Forest's defense system."

"Oh! That's right! The sacred treasure was stolen!"

"...Then what was the point of breaking the rules and leaving the forest, Big Sis Pahal?"

"I left the forest to chase after Big Brother Walt, who went out to retrieve the sacred treasure!"

"Then why did you forget it had been stolen...?"

The sacred treasure the elves were searching for—the one Pahal and her older brother, Walt, were after—apparently had a close connection to the Great Forest's defense system.

And the Machine City had launched its invasion after the treasure was stolen... It all seemed a little too convenient. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence after all.

"If the sacred treasure is gone, how are you controlling the tree soldiers?"

"Several powerful elves work together to activate them. ...Even then, they can barely manage to turn a tiny part of the forest into tree soldiers."

"Then what we saw earlier was...?"

"There were probably scouts nearby. They reported our location to the spellcasters, who then turned only the surrounding trees into tree soldiers. I think about half of what we saw was an illusion, too. It would take way too much energy otherwise."

I see. So that's how it worked.

As long as they turned the trees around us into tree soldiers each time, they could keep us surrounded.

"Um, so does that mean we've escaped their surveillance for now?"

"That's right. We got out using Hatch, moving fast enough to shake off the scouts. We were following a route that led outside the forest for a while, so they probably think we've already left it by now."

According to Himeros, the elders weren't actually trying to kill Pahal and Lies. Their goal was probably just to scare them badly enough that they would never dare approach the forest again.

"On top of that, this area is my secret base. I've set up illusion magic to conceal Hatch. So we're relatively safe for the time being. Got it?"

...Amazing.

I couldn't remember my own age, but I was probably around the same age as him. And yet he thought things through so much more deeply than I did.

"By the way, what's this 'Hatch' thing? It's a mechanical soldier, but does that mean it's on our side?"

Pahal asked about the mechanical soldier called Hatch, which had been making all sorts of strange movements in the corner of my vision.

Honestly, I'd been curious about it the whole time we were sitting in seiza, so I was glad she'd asked.

"Umm, where should I start...?"

Himeros pondered that for a moment before beginning with, "Well, to start with..."

"I occasionally go outside the forest. I take the utmost care to make sure the other elves don't find out."

"What?! You can't do that! That's breaking the rules!"

"You're the one saying that, Big Sis Pahal?"

"...Fair point!"

It struck me that the elves I knew were Lies, who'd grown up in a big city; Pahal, who was wandering around in defiance of the rules; and Himeros, a habitual illegal border-crosser. My sense of what was normal had gotten pretty warped by now.

Still, Pahal's shocked reaction to Himeros saying he went outside the forest made it clear just how outrageously abnormal his behavior really was.

"If they found out, you'd obviously...?"

"I'd be exiled, I guess. I'd never be allowed to return to the Great Forest. I'd never get to see my family again, either."

"You're prepared to go that far... But why would you do it?"

When Lies asked him that, he answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Because I got curious."

His eyes sparkled as he spoke.

"What was outside the forest? What kind of world was out there? People, plants and animals, scenery, food, clothing, shelter, festivals... The world of Chaos, where every kind of world comes together. What could possibly be waiting out there? That's all there was to it."

His voice was overflowing with excitement and anticipation, as if his heart might burst from it all.

"—Besides, you guys can't exactly criticize me for it, can you?"

Now that he mentioned it...

I was traveling on a journey to save the world.

Pahal was traveling in search of her older brother.

Lies had traveled to spread her mother's final wishes.

Every one of us had left our homeland to pursue something we wanted to do. So, yes, we were definitely in no position to criticize him.

"Anyway, I'd already been going outside on my own back when Big Sis Pahal was still living in the forest. That's when I met Hatch."

The boy continued his story.

Apparently, the mechanical soldier had been in terrible condition when he'd found it.

"At first, calling it scrap metal would've been an understatement. Living in the forest doesn't give you many opportunities to learn about machinery, and I barely even understood what it was in the first place."

Even so, the boy believed it could become a key that would open the door to an unknown world. With that thought in mind, he desperately hauled the scrap metal into the forest.

He did it little by little, stealing moments when the other elves weren't looking. He used every method he could think of to move the enormous, heavy mass of metal: the principle of leverage, magic, and all sorts of other tricks.

On days when he couldn't get outside the forest at all, he devoted himself to improving his secret base, where he could hide the scrap metal. He studied magic with everything he had, conducting research and experiments. As a result, he managed to complete a secret base that had kept the elves deceived for years, right up to the present day.

"Once I'd somehow managed to get it into the forest, I got completely absorbed in tinkering with it. I'd take it apart, put it back together, then break it again. Over and over."

"I'd noticed that sometimes you were nowhere to be seen for ages, but I never imagined you were doing something like that! That's a surprise, all right!"

He'd go outside the forest to look for useful parts, then return and tinker with the machine.

He'd kept that routine up for nearly ten years.

And at last, the boy—born and raised in a world diametrically opposed to mechanical and scientific civilization—had managed to repair a mechanical soldier from another world.

"Well, apparently, seventy or eighty percent of the work was thanks to its built-in self-repair function. It seems it had still been working, even if only a tiny bit, and it took several years for the repairs to finish."

『No need for modesty. The self-repair function, which had been inactive, started working thanks to Himeros. During his process of disassembling and reassembling me at random, he reconnected the severed circuits, ya know!』

The mechanical soldier the boy had named Hatch spoke while slowly raising and lowering its long arms and legs.

From what I could tell, those strange movements didn't seem to serve any particular purpose.

Also, its way of ending sentences sounded a little weird.

"...Oops. That high-speed maneuver must've broken something else again. It's a junker that I've only just managed to get moving, so its movements and speech go haywire pretty often."

『I ain't no junker, wax!』

"Anyway, even though it's like this, it's completely independent of the Machine City's original command system. I think it'll come in handy in certain situations."

"Does that mean... you'll help us?"

It would be reassuring if they agreed to work with us.

That was why I'd asked, but...

"Nope. That's not it."

He shot me down without a second thought.

Still, escaping the encirclement alone was already more than enough. They'd helped us enormously. Expecting anything more would be asking too much.

"It's the other way around. I'm not going to help you, big brother. You're going to help me."

"...Huh?"

Wait, what did that mean?

He was going to cooperate with us... wasn't he?

"...Anyway, back to the lecture. Were you seriously planning to walk straight back to the very people who'd given you such a harsh rejection before? Of course they'd just turn you away again."

...He had a point.

But what else could we do...?

"If the front door doesn't work, use the back door. If they won't listen, prepare something to negotiate with. You can't just fight honestly and head-on all the time. You have to use a few underhanded tricks, too."

Then Himeros held out his right hand toward me and declared:

"So, since I can't leave a bunch of hopeless big brothers like you in charge, all three of you are going to take part in my plan. ...The grand operation to punch a hole in the Great Forest's stagnation!"