17-6 The Spirits’ Space Trip

I came to the Alba Grand Temple.

A sharp-eyed spirit materialized and took the form of a child wearing cat ears.

It was as cute as that manga character said to be the first anthropomorphized cat drawn in Japan.

That was something I had read in my older sister’s manga when I was a child, so maybe the spirit had read my mind.

It happily pulled me by the hand and guided me, but in the end, it was only after my mana as a tip, so it cooled my enthusiasm a little.

Well, it was cute, so I gladly forgave it.

The others were also milling around me.

Here, I had been having them train as satellite crew members through a simple educational manual.

Even though I called them satellites, they were still pseudo-products.

The plan was to make up for all their performance with spirits.

When I tried using golems, it turned out to be unexpectedly difficult.

How should I put it? Spirits were dexterous and flexible.

If I forced golems to do it and they were useless at the critical moment, there would be nothing I could do.

After all, I had no idea how things would develop.

No matter who I asked, all I heard about the opponent was “seasoned veteran,” “terrifying ability user,” and even ridiculous things like, “Even you might not get away unharmed.”

If I failed this time, it would affect this old man’s life.

After all, my opponent was that obviously dangerous man named Balan.

If this old man died now, the people left behind would be in serious trouble.

I had the spirits board the launch satellite pods and get used to handling various things.

Most of the functions depended on the spirits, so they were almost nothing but “empty shells.”

Otherwise, there was no way I could make satellites this quickly.

The satellites also had a homing function, so the spirits could freely return from space.

I was not launching them all the way to geostationary orbit.

It seemed there was very little mana essence too high in the sky.

Was mana essence not a force that filled space, but a force originating from the planet?

If “they” were producing it, that would make sense too.

Did mana essence exist on other planets as well?

If they existed there too, then that was also possible.

I launched an unmanned craft to experiment, and I was able to send mana up from here, but I still worried if they got too far from the ground.

It would be a problem if an accident happened by some chance and the spirits could not return.

Right now, I still had no spaceship that could rescue a stranded satellite.

It was still the first satellite, after all.

At most, I kept them at about the same altitude as the ISS.

However, they did not move; I had imbued them with magic and forced them to remain in the sky.

At that altitude, in the worst case, with my special eyesight, I might be able to visually confirm them and recover them with storage.

Spirits, being nonliving beings, were existences that could be hidden inside the item box just like golems.

They were not ordinary beings, after all.

It was like constantly running a VTOL’s vertical takeoff nozzles and propulsion nozzles at full power.

They only needed to remain in space for a short time during the operation, so I was brute-forcing it by relying on mana quantity.

I also stuffed a large number of Besmagil batteries into the item box.

To prevent the satellites from getting stranded, I locked things so the spirits could not nibble on the mana.

The system was set up so that it would be unlocked when needed.

I had arranged to give them snack magic stones separately, so there was no problem.

I carried out a manned test with the spirits aboard.

Though the ones riding were not actually humans.

Recently, I had discovered a wonderful user of gravity magic and had that spirit teach it to me.

Since I had only learned how to use it to pin down monsters, it was an eye-opening experience.

These satellites were also being launched using that.

Even at the altitude I was launching them to this time, using gravity magic should be able to secure over ninety percent of the planet’s gravity.

If this was a planet structured like Earth, that is.

I tried doing it that way because I was worried about using normal magic as flight power in places high up, where mana essence and air were thin.

I could send mana remotely from here too, but as expected, I basically wanted to consider safety.

Once they came back down, wind magic could be used as support too, so even if teleportation magic became unusable by some chance, they should be able to endure atmospheric reentry.

That was why I had also shaped them like Apollo return capsules.

Otherwise, if they were like the early Soviet return capsules, they would spin around irregularly, and from the outside, they would look like nothing but a crash.

A state policy that disregarded human life under an authoritarian country was what led to the development of dangerous things like that.

They staked national prestige on being even a little faster than America.

For now, I had prepared ten satellites, so I launched all ten for training.

The spirits were also quite excited about riding such unusual vehicles, and they were doing all sorts of things however they liked.

There were no obstacles in the sky, and I could monitor them by radar even from here.

Then, after completing a full round of training, I had them return to the ground.

For now, I planned to conduct training every day.

With this, I thought the trump card would somehow be ready.

After that, I headed to His Highness Michael.

There was certain information I wanted, but unfortunately, he did not have it.

I headed to the Empire in search of further information.

I visited the tanuki-like ambassador, but he did not have the information either.

Next, I visited Nielsen for the first time in a while, and to my surprise, the person I was looking for was there.

“Balan of Scorching Heat.”

Though rather than meeting him for the first time, I was merely peeping at him.

He was an eerie man.

His appearance matched the information that said he did not show much expression. At first glance, he looked like nothing more than a gloomy scholar-like old man.

And yet, for some reason, he bothered me.

A warning signal lit up in my heart.

I remembered Ars’s words, when he had said that man was dangerous.

I quickly placed a marker on Balan.

With this, I could monitor his movements at any time.

However, the instant I did so, Balan smoothly raised his face and looked around.

That was close. For a moment, I thought I had been found.

No good. This guy was definitely someone with some sort of ability like the Seventh Sense.

Unlike me, who had honed mine mainly through manufacturing work and hobbies, this was the skill of a genuine killer who had honed it by killing, killing, and killing again.

He was on a different level from a small fry like Rick.

I once again thanked the slime that had given me that detection-nullifying skill.

It seemed he was certain of someone’s presence, but he could not clearly determine the location.

“Marquis. It seems there is a rat.”

The moment I heard those words, I immediately teleported and fled.

Maybe Balan noticed that I teleported, but if I hesitated, there was a chance he could have put up something like an anti-teleportation barrier.

That sort of magical mechanism actually existed, so for a man of his level, it would not be strange if he had a magic tool or skill with such a function.

He was apparently quite skilled in magic.

He was an opponent I wanted to avoid fighting immediately right now, so I withdrew at once.

Just in case he could track the trail of my teleportation magic, I first escaped to the Glass Garden.

I myself could do something like teleportation search, so there was no guarantee that a skilled magic user could not do the same thing.

There was no one who knew the details of his abilities.

My heartbeat still had not settled down.

That was dangerous.

I felt like this was the first time since coming to this world that I had sensed danger.

Thinking back now, even my first battle with bandits and the dragon had been no big deal.

Those were things I could easily hunt with cheats.

But he was different.

I felt like a herbivore that had learned, for the first time in its life, of the existence of something that hunted it.

However, a power like the Seventh Sense was not a power possessed only by hunters.

It was a power possessed by both those who hunted and those who were hunted.

The one with superior ability and usage would survive.

I was not merely a creature that would be hunted either.

I did not think Balan possessed what one would call “the Seventh Sense.”

That was something a little special, not something one could simply obtain at will.

As far as I knew, someone of the wicked type who would side with the current Empire should not have that.

It should be something “not given” to that type of person.

The selection test was strict, after all.

Though if his heart had later fallen into darkness and he had joined the Empire afterward, I could not be sure.

After all, he was originally not an imperial noble, but an adventurer.

Even on Earth, there should have been hundreds of thousands of people with the Seventh Sense.

In this world too, there were surely many people like me.

This was a world like another Earth.

I did not know what kind of heart Balan truly had, or what kind of person he really was.

At the very least, the Seventh Sense should be a power that could not be “given” to people who were strange villains or turncoats.

The system should be set up that way.

It was something like a “gift” that only people whose hearts were tested through an exam—or rather, a trial—and who were “liked” could receive.

Normally, someone with such a Seventh Sense should not become my enemy at a time like this.

If such a person were among my enemies, that fact itself would have some meaning.

It would become a line of extinction called destiny, cutting off my life together with that enemy.

This time, I did not particularly feel that kind of presence.

If someone like that existed, I should surely know.

If that were the case, my heart would feel heavy, and I would naturally take on a solemn mood, as if accepting destiny and fate.

It seemed that on Earth, I had one such unwelcome counterpart too.

The Seventh Sense itself had once told me that.

Fortunately, it seemed I had not been fated to meet that person.

Unlike me, the other party was not allowed to freely leave their country and lived on the opposite side of the Earth.

That was a country where it was extremely difficult for foreigners to enter, and I had no business in such a special country anyway.

It was an extremely special country, not the sort of place ordinary people would visit for sightseeing, so that was fortunate for me.

Balan seemed to be using a strange power, but he probably did not understand the true nature of the Seventh Sense, and likely did not even have the concept.

If he had turned out to be a transferred person from another world or something, I would have tucked tail and outsourced the job to Ars, who had been through many battles.

After all, Ars had apparently once fought Balan and repelled him in the past.

Now that things had come to this, I would not challenge Balan to a reckless direct battle.

The one who would die was him.

No, meeting him today had been extremely meaningful.

This Al-san’s motto was: preparedness wards off worry.

Preparations were perfect.

The imperial army itself was not that big of a deal.

If I only wanted to slaughter them all, it would be over in an instant.

Whether it would really be acceptable to do such a thing was a separate issue in many ways.

Balan must be killed.

If he was too difficult, I would defeat him even if I had to get Ars’s support.

No questions asked; I would not even allow him resistance.

But I would not kill the imperial soldiers.

I had told His Highness Michael that much, at least.

Thinking about the future, that was what I had decided.

Looking at conflicts on Earth, that was probably the correct answer here too.

I wanted to avoid an exchange of grudges with the Empire that would turn into a muddy cycle of bloody retaliation.

That would drag everything into it and continue tormenting both nations for a long, long time.

So I would not let that happen.

However, I would be sure to break the hearts of the people of the Empire.