Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 2 Read online

  Prologue

  I, Eiji Kazama, died. To my utter embarrassment, my death was the picture-perfect depiction of dumbassery brought to life by CGI. Poisoned to death at the Azur castle I had walked right into with all of my guards down. My task of restoring a world screwed up by the knowledge of a hero (after he had saved it by defeating the Demon Lord) came to a halt less than a month in.

  My story should have ended then and there, since my contract was for one lifetime. Once I’m dead, I’m done. But I couldn’t accept that. After I found out that my partner, Tiamat, was my fiancée, and that the hero who brought about the slow and steady destruction to the world was her brother, who had killed himself...

  Come to think of it, Tiamat not telling me the hero’s name, despite her knowing everything, must have been an attempt to hide those facts from me. Even if I was to find out eventually, she’d wanted that to happen later rather than sooner. My fiancée had her way with words. Per her intentions, I wasn’t very interested in the hero’s name or his bloodline until my last moments. I think Tiamat was conflicted, or troubled, over getting me caught up in her matters. And she was the type to never tell me when she was troubled. I told her over and over again that what troubles her, troubles me; she would always worry about me instead. Some fiancé I was.

  But, now that I knew what I did, I couldn’t back down. That’s why I pleaded with the Inspector to be given one more chance. It was the one trick up her sleeve. There was no next time. Die again, and my job would really be finished. No more room for stupid mistakes. To say that I had unyielding resolve might be painting myself in too good of a light.

  “Wait for me. I won’t let you carry that weight alone.”

  “Hm? Did you say something?”

  A voice slid into my ears. It belonged to Tiamat, standing behind me. My vision began to light up. In front of me sat a middle-aged man without an expression. Viscount Zahreed, as I recalled. He was the royal messenger. My mind and memories became clearer. It seemed that this was where I would pick up.

  “Nothing, Tia.”

  Turning my head back to her, I answered my partner. While there was so much I wanted to talk to her about, there was the matter at hand to deal with first.

  “Our King, His Majesty, has a few questions to ask you.”

  After clearing his throat, Viscount Zahreed made his declaration. I remembered those words from before.

  “So, you want us to come to the castle?” I asked.

  In the same way as before, I remember.

  “Indeed.”

  His response, again, was as I recalled it. Here’s where I agreed, walked right into the castle, and ended up killed. How stupid was I? Giving them the home field advantage this early in the game? As a bureaucrat, or just as an adult, I should have picked up on the common tactic of the powerful.

  “That doesn’t sound right, Mister Messenger. If he wants something from us, he should come to us.”

  That’s why I chose a different path.

  “Wha—?!”

  The messenger flapped his jaw like a goldfish out of water. That seemed about right. He must not have expected rejection, or even a little bit of resistance. No one was more powerful than the King in his own kingdom, right? It would take some serious guts to refuse his summons. Of course, I had an excuse ready. I didn’t die for nothing.

  “While a king coming to see a commoner may seem strange to you, I am not a citizen of your country. Furthermore, a human summoning Hermits would break etiquette.”

  This was also a show of my resolve. Until this point, either from embarrassment or for fear of acting superior, I had rarely called myself a Hermit. Now, I didn’t have that luxury. I’m going to use that title and every privilege that comes with it.

  “You do have a point there. Viscount Zahreed. If the king wishes to see us, we are willing to oblige. But only if it’s done right. Otherwise, your country’s reputation may suffer.”

  Tiamat gave me a glance and a smile, being the perfect partner again, flawlessly picking up what I put down. But...

  That’s my fiancée?

  I couldn’t help but wonder if she could turn herself back into human form. I didn’t fall in love with just her looks though. I swear.

  “...Very well. I will report to His Majesty the full extent of your resolve.”

  With that, the messenger stood up.

  Do-Over!

  1.

  After sending the messenger back, I invited Tiamat for a stroll. We walked, heading for a little hill that overlooked the town.

  “You’re inviting me to go outside... What’s the occasion?”

  “I wanted to apologize.”

  “Did you do something that warrants an apology, Eiji?”

  A natural question. I prepared myself with a short inhale.

  “I called your brother a piece of shit, several times.”

  “...You knew?” Tiamat said, after a moment of silence long enough for light to travel three million kilometers. She looked at me.

  “I realized after I died. I’m surprised at how incompetent I was.”

  In summary, I explained my story so far. My partner listened to me, nodding along.

  “I’m surprised the Inspector had such a trick up his sleeve.”

  “His?”

  “That’s the kind of existence it is. It’ll appear as a man or a woman, according to your mindset. Didn’t he explain that to you?”

  “Right... I remember something like that...”

  Something about shaping herself after what was in my mind. In short, I figured that she appeared in a form we can understand. If she had appeared to me in a form reminiscent of Nyarlathotep, my Sanity would have hit zero in the blink of an eye.

  “I don’t know about that comparison. Who are you trying to appeal to with your Call of Cthulhu reference?”

  Sorry, I couldn’t help it.

  “By the way, why do you look like that?”

  “If I was going into a fantasy world, I wanted to play something non-human.”

  That’s it?! That’s why you’re a dragon?!

  Nonhuman is a wide spectrum, too. She could have been an elegant elf with gold locks and blue eyes, or a glamorous she-demon, or a cute little hobbit... Not even a Dragonborn, but she had to be a straight-up dragon. That was a little too kinky for me!

  “And you’d sleep with that elf, right? Without realizing she was your fiancée.”

  “N-N-N-N-Never! I’m a f-f-f-f-faithful man!”

  “That’s something you should say without avoiding eye contact.”

  Tiamat cackled boisterously. While I remembered my fiancée to be a woman full of humor, she was never this eccentric. What happened?

  “Besides, I would have too much resemblance to Shizuru if I looked like my human self. Although the people alive today are generations after him, I didn’t want anyone to see the connection,” she added in a rather serious tone.

  Someone who doesn’t know her might think that this was the real reason, but I wasn’t about to fall for that trick. Without a doubt, and with all sincerity, the first reason she gave was her real reason for her decision. Tacking on some legitimate-sounding reason to manipulate my psyche was one of her usual tactics. She was a master of conversation; she didn’t make a living as a student counselor for giggles.

  “Can you return to your human self, by the way?” I changed the subject.

  Even if the real reason was the one she added on, or even if she had some other reason, no matter how dire that reason was, she would crack jokes with all of her might. She would risk her life for a laugh. That’s the kind of woman she was, never letting anyone see her in pain. I knew that well, and that was why I wante
d to support her. That much has never changed.

  “No. More accurately, this is my form in this world. I could use a transformation spell to take a human form, but that would only be a disguise.”

  “So, you can...”

  I would have preferred that, if it could be done.

  “I can.”

  As soon as she confirmed it, her appearance changed with a puff of smoke... to a middle-aged man with rippling muscles like Conan the Barbarian.

  “Why did you turn into a man?!”

  “It’s a transformation spell. I can be whoever I want to be.”

  The man laughed, as he twitched his pecs up and down. Yep. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

  “...Dragon, please...”

  “Mm-hm.”

  She returned to her old form with another poof. Oh, how nice it was to recognize her again. Dang it.

  “We may have scared off the messenger, but danger is still afoot,” Tiamat said, looking down on the city from the little hill.

  In the far distance, we could see the castle. That’s where I was killed.

  “Right. We just dodged the first bullet.”

  Follow that messenger, and I would have been killed. We simply avoided that. Now that we’d sent away the messenger, they would soon be moving on to their next move. It was difficult to predict, at this point, whether they would try to get rid of us diplomatically or by force. I didn’t get the script for what was about to happen. A re-do was a re-do, but I didn’t really gain any edge from it.

  “Hm. I did warn Baze and Hieronymus about it using Thought Speech. They won’t fall for a sudden attack.”

  “Magic’s pretty handy, isn’t it?”

  “Too bad you can’t use it.”

  “You’re a Dosanko too, Tia.”

  “My body belongs to this world. And, I’m a dragon. The most powerful species alive.”

  “Dammit! Dammit!”

  I have nothing, and my fiancée is loaded head to toe with cheat codes. It wasn’t fair. Could I not have gotten something? I wasn’t asking for laser eyes or anything.

  “That being said, they shouldn’t be coming at us with blunt force.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “All of your friends, including me, are strong, Eiji. If we clash head-on, Azur would be left with considerable damage, too.”

  “Guess you’re right.”

  I could definitely agree with that. That’s why they had poisoned me, to cut off the head of the group to eliminate structure from our party.

  “A long con, then? Like talking crap about what we’re doing.”

  “Seems feasible.”

  They could ban or prosecute the edamame, gagd meat, and beet sugar as the devil’s food or something. Even on Earth, this was a tactic in the playbook of religious groups. In modern Japan, health products with no science to their merit are promoted on TV all the time. Even when distributors are prosecuted, the media that promoted the product get away scot-free. Just a testament against wholeheartedly believing any information you hear on TV, or on the internet. Any words spoken without liability is worth no more than a rumor.

  “That being said, rumors can be a powerful force. No sense looking for proof or liability in them.”

  “Right. It’s not something anyone could handle alone,” I agreed.

  “And, what is your plan if the throne employs those tactics?”

  “There is no plan. We turn away and run.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Inspector told me...”

  I relayed to Tia that there are many people suffering from beriberi in the neighboring kingdom of Noura too. In fact, I figured that the disease had spread throughout the entire continent.

  “Well, most of the continent is not occupied by humans.”

  The area that was occupied, apparently, was only a little bit larger than Hokkaido. We were in a medieval world, after all. The area in question was nowhere near as vast as a continent on Earth. On the flip side, that was probably why rice farming spread so quickly. Without a civilized method of communication, it was natural that the affected area was limited.

  In any case, only saving the kingdom of Azur was pointless. Our endeavors were far from successful if we couldn’t spread our cure to all of the areas where people mostly ate white rice and not much else.

  “That’s why... I thought we could go on a trip.”

  “The world tour of saving the world.”

  “It’s nothing to get hyped up about. But if there are countries where we can get close to the center of the government, we could gain a lot more reach.”

  In Azur, we couldn’t even do that. It was stressful to have a target on your head, and to be honest, being killed once had kind of traumatized me. Even if it was by the descendant of my fiancée’s brother. How could I be chummy with someone who held malicious, or even murderous, intentions towards me? Sorry, but I wasn’t that noble. I had no desire to approach the royalty of Azur anymore. Of course, if they were to approach us, I was willing to hear them out.

  “Chicken.”

  “But when I was killed, oh boy, did you lose it. It was adorable.” I grinned.

  “Shut up.”

  The dragon’s tail swished around and forcefully spanked my butt.

  2.

  The edamame buyouts had begun. The Azur government had pressured the producers to limit the plant’s flow into the market. The same thing had happened in Japan, when the government bought up all the rice they could before setting their price and putting it on the market. The intention was to keep the producers from overpricing their people’s main source of food.

  “That’s just plain dumb.”

  That was my partner’s opinion, and I agreed. A ubiquitous food, like rice, was one thing. The people would buy it regardless. But edamame wasn’t that. It was far from becoming a staple, and we were still in experimental stages when it came to recipes. That’s why we had to draw people’s attention through the sweetness of the Zunda mochi. Even if the government ordered the people to eat it, they wouldn’t know what to do with it without knowing how to cook it. Edamame was livestock feed in the first place.

  If things would resolve by some governmental force-feeding, we would have never needed to explore alternatives like edamame or gagd. All the king had to do was to tell his people to eat brown rice. Tokugawa Yoshimune (who massively improved the country during the Edo period) ate brown rice himself, as well as promoted it to his men and commoners alike. Still, most people in the city continued to eat white rice. That’s about how well these things go.

  Even a modern man like myself can understand the pushback against any government power dictating what to eat. What’s worse, since there was no way of watching the people eat the foods shoved down their throats by the government, they were most likely just discarded.

  “This may be the worst move they could make.”

  Mister Milon chuckled. Since we had no way of obtaining edamame, we had halted the sales of Zunda mochi, too. Just selling the beet sugar would only wreck the market. This would not have been a laughing matter for us if it wasn’t for one reason: we had already developed a substitute prescription for beriberi, and it was ready to go on the shelves.

  Ten days had passed since we sent back the royal messenger, and Tiamat and I had done a little more than just goofing around during that time. The next weapon in our arsenal was potato croquette. Potatoes grew most anywhere, but because of the minor toxin in their eyes, historically it took a while for them to become popularized. Also, continuously growing potatoes apparently weakened the soil. In recent history, the population of Europe practically depended on its yield of potatoes. It was a little too risky to make it our main weapon.

  So we decided to sell something pre-processed. We had rye, so we could make panko, and while they weren’t exactly chickens, there was a similar livestock from which we could gather eggs. In addition, we would stuff the croquette with ground gagd meat. We would be able to counter the king’s move. Alth
ough, considering the issue of preservation, we also wanted a refrigerator. So that’s exactly what we were making while waiting for the kingdom’s response.

  The idea, of course, came from Tiamat. Her trivia came in handy yet again. There is a type of refrigerator that doesn’t require electricity or ice: a zeer, or pot-in-pot cooler. Its usage dates back millennia, but it had only recently been scientifically analyzed and used in modern technology. The only things needed to make one are a pair of pots in different sizes, along with dirt and water. Construction is simple. Put the small pot in the big pot, fill in the gap with dirt, and soak the dirt with plenty of water. That’s it. Though there would have to be a wet cloth or something draped over it to keep dust out, I would say this is still an extremely simple contraption.

  While you might wonder if its contents would really cool, the inside of that small pot becomes spectacularly cold. The trick of it is in a process called evaporative cooling, where evaporating water takes a lot of heat with it. In Japan, for example, this process is used during the summer through hosing down the street or outside your front door.

  The contraption would be less effective in places with high moisture in the air like Tokyo, but the climate of this region was similar to that of Hokkaido. Dry summers. If used in a dry, breezy location, the zeer’s internal temperature can drop to about 4 degrees Celsius. In fact, this is apparently used in rural Africa, where they don’t have electricity, to enable the storing of vaccines, saving many lives in the process. Of course, that allows for preserving fresh foods at the same time.

  “The wisdom of Hermits never ceases to amaze me.”

  Mister Milon laughed as he took out a tomato-ish food from the zeer. Taking a bite from a cold, fresh vegetable in the middle of summer must have been a great luxury here. On second thought, vegetables and fruits could have also been kept submerged in a well.

  “It was Tia’s idea. Nothing like this could come from my knowledge.” I shrugged.

  “As humble as ever,” Mister Milon replied.

  Nope. Just honest.

  “In any case, let’s start selling the croquettes tonight.”