Kumo desu ga, Nani ka? 317

Yes, it’s been a long time. Almost 4 months. But… we finally have a new chapter!

317 – Pals

Author’s note:

Summary of the previous chapter – Demon King says「You guys are friends!」and Shiro goes (WTF) “S, say whhaAATT!!” (MIND BLOWN)

What are “friends”? It’s a noun. Yep. That’s not really wrong, but that’s not what’s being referred to here is it.

What are “friends”? A relationship where you do the same things. A business relationship, where you have the same status. Kindred people with similar tastes. There’s slight variations between these examples, but they have similar meanings. In other words, it refers to a group who are similar.

Are we actually similar though? To be blunt, we’re not similar in terms of combat ability. I am outstanding and the others are far behind. It would be hard to say that we’re a group in that regard. However, it can be said that we are a group in the sense that we have the same objective.

That being the case, are we really “friends”? Wouldn’t that be incredible. For me, who has always thought of myself as being a loner since my previous life, to have actually made friends already!

Erm. Ermmm. So how exactly do you deal with friends again? Please teach me, o exalted one!

「Shiro-chan isn’t recovering from her freeze. This is hopeless. It was too early for Shiro-chan to deal with the concept of friendship. I’d been sure that she’d been putting in the effort and had achieved results too.」
「Umm?」
「Wrath-kun. As you can see here, Shiro-chan is a child whose emotions are still highly undeveloped. You mustn’t be tricked by her appearance or atmosphere. So when Shiro-chan is about to do something unreasonable, it’s generally because she’s simply using violence to cover up the fact that something is inconvenient to her. See? Putting it that way, she sure sounds like a child, right?」
「Uh, umm.」
「Because of that, when you think she’s doing something bad, you must deal with her not in the sense of stating an opinion, but in the sense of scolding her. Don’t expect her to ever improve if you don’t do this.」
「Scold her? Me?」
「Sophia-chan is like that, so I can only rely on you.」
「Hey! What do you mean by “like that”!?」

It’s kinda noisy out there, but currently I’m desperately thinking about pals so I wish they’d be quiet. Ermm, the friends I know… are the party members in the games I played, right! I see, like with party members I can appreciate them when I feel so inclined and when they’re annoying I can just kick them out! That being the case, I had briefly considered patting vampire girl on the head in appreciation but for some reason when I look at her making a racket while still trussed up like a bagworm, I got annoyed and kicked her.

「Why was I kicked just now!? Hey! Why!?」

Silence. That’s just how friends are, right?

「It feels to me like Shiro-chan has established a fundamental flaw in her understanding, but well, whatever.」
「Ariel-san, please don’t just give up here.」
「Putting that aside…」
「Putting that aside!?」

The Demon King and oni-kun are having an exchange like something from a comedy skit. However, one of them has a serious expression – the Demon King. It seems to be something important.

「Shiro-chan, what do you think about this?」

The Demon King gestures with her chin at the monitor while asking me that. Due to her grave expression, it seems that oni-kun and vampire girl realise that this is a serious matter. They focus their attention on what’s written on the monitor…… though vampire-girl is still trussed up like a bagworm.

「Where is the problem here?」

Oni-kun spends some time reading over the article projected onto the monitor, but it seems that he doesn’t see the problem that the Demon King spotted. Because vampire girl has uselessly high pride she won’t say that she doesn’t understand, but from her expression it seems she doesn’t understand either.

「This is definitely a problem.」

The Demon King is gazing at the contents, seemingly confounded. What was written there was a piece of Potimas’s sort-of diary. It seems that because he had a diligent personality he would write about the events of the day in his diary and without missing a single day. Well, since he’s simply just robotically writing down the events of the day in a plain manner, I feel that it’s difficult to call it a diary though. Basically, there’s almost nothing about his personal impressions. In some places he does write things that feel like his feelings on his research, but that’s extremely rare. Since the writer almost never conveys his emotions, it’s not really a diary I guess.

However, in the portion that the Demon King is pointing to, Potimas’s emotions can be seen for once in the contents. What’s contained within there, is impatience. And suspicion.

〈The total amount of MA Energy has suddenly deteriorated substantially. The cause is unknown. It likely has a connection with the dimensional quake that was simultaneously observed by our equipment, but at present I cannot say what. This is clearly an abnormal event. Such a thing has not occured once since the System was put into operation. Has a serious defect occured within the System? Is it safe to stay on this planet? It is uncertain. I have been forbidden to depart from this planet by Gyuriedistodiez, but perhaps I should prepare to escape anyway.〉

Yup. It’s that. That particular incident perpetrated by the Hero from two generations ago and the previous generation Demon King. By meddling with the use of Dimension Magic, they caused an explosion in a classroom in Japan. This is an entry from the time when the event that caused us reincarnators to reincarnate into this world occured. Owing to what was perpetrated by this pair, we reincarnators were born in this world, and also the Demon King became the new generation Demon King in order to desperately secure the MA Energy that had been lost in the aftermath.

Vampire girl and oni-kun have already heard a summary of this incident, so they wouldn’t be astonished about reading that aspect. That’s probably why they’re baffled as to what the Demon King is questioning them about. However, this is a big problem. After all, the one who wrote this is Potimas.

「What does this mean? It wasn’t Potimas who instigated the Hero and Demon King?」

Yep. That’s the point. With regards to Potimas being the one who induced the Hero from two generations ago and the previous generation Demon King, what’s astonishing is the fact that the mastermind actually turns out to be someone else. Eh? It’s possible that those two simply did it by themselves you ask? There’s no way that a bunch who didn’t even know the first basics about the System would be able to do such a thing you know. There would have had to have been someone who taught them about the System. Without that, ignorant humans couldn’t possibly have gone beyond space and time to actually reach D in that classroom. Because even Potimas didn’t know about the existence of D it seems.

…….And having concluded that, the culprit is obvious. The Demon King should realise this too. It’s just that she doesn’t want to accept it.

「That’s right. Everything is my responsibility.」

The voice of a third party who wasn’t amongst us is heard. The one who had appeared via teleporting through space was the person I had expected. An administrator of this world, wrapped in black full-body armour. That person being Kuro, aka, Gyuriedistodiez.

Translation notes:

“What are “friends”? It’s a noun” – this is more of a pun in the original Japanese. The question is what is “仲間”, which has two possible meanings – the common one being “friends” and the less common one being a surname (“Nakama”). So the literal meaning of the original Japanese is “What are “nakama”? It’s a surname”.