Volume 3 Chapter 19 The Bridge
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
After we sent the Emperor off to the Imperial Capital in a carriage provided by the Milisky liege, we turned our horses north.
”You two need to dial it back,” Thomas complained, eyeing us. “We’re technically on the clock here. Show some professional restraint.”
Kenze ignored him and clung to my arm. The progress she’d been making seemed to unravel overnight, and now she refused to leave my side. The name “Boltechino”1 seemed to be what set her off.
Whenever we traveled, our carriage led the formation. If a monster appeared, Kenze would shoot it down or drive it away before I could even react. When we reached a town, she acted as my interpreter and gathered information. Even if her official status was that of a slave, nobody dared complain about how closely she stayed by my side. Thomas was the lone exception, and he never missed a chance to voice his irritation.
Pamela, our elf mage and the group’s usual peacekeeper, was stuck in the rear carriage with Onhart, keeping an eye on the hostages. That left only me, Kenze, and the baby in my carriage. Aside from the feeding schedule every six hours, she spent nearly the entire trip holding on to my arm while I handled the reins, all while keeping watch ahead. The recent increase in monster activity put more pressure on Thomas, but honestly, she was better at the job than he was. I had a feeling his complaints were less about professionalism and more about jealousy.
Thinking back to my previous life in middle management, this level of attachment from a valuable asset like Kenze was not exactly ideal.
”Kenze,” I asked, “are you afraid of… the Boltechino?”
”Yes,” she replied, her voice flat and distant.
That was as far as the conversation went. No matter what I asked after that, she shut down completely. She was a former intelligence operative who would not hesitate to kill someone or cut off an enemy’s ears to get information, yet the mere mention of that group left her frozen. And honestly, digging into it was not going to make the trauma disappear.
Five days after parting ways with the Emperor, we were halfway to the border city of Velysk.
”Stop.”
Kenze, who had been leaning against my arm, suddenly stood on the coachman’s bench and signaled the rear carriage. It was not even four in the afternoon yet, but the daylight was already fading.
”What is it? Something wrong?” Thomas called out suspiciously.
Kenze responded by pressing a finger to her lips.
Fifty meters ahead, a capybara-like creature darted onto the road. It glanced our way for a split second before bolting from right to left. We had seen wild animals before—deer, tanuki, and plenty of others—but nothing like this.
”What the hell? It’s just a Great Magic Rat. Don’t scare me like that,” Thomas barked, the tension already leaving his voice.
”Shh!” Kenze hissed sharply.
More rats poured onto the road, and behind them came the Al-miraj, rabbits with white horns and tusks that sprinted past in a desperate rush, seemingly trying to outrun the rats.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, hundreds of rats flooded the road, followed by a massive tide of Al-miraj. Mixed among them were Red-Eyed Wolves and Bear-Forest-Cats, all racing toward the woods as though something was chasing them.
I had no idea what I was looking at, so all I could do was watch.
Then a Bear-Forest-Cat nearly two meters long was overtaken by something huge and white that dropped from above.
”Ice Snow Spiders!” Thomas shouted.
The spider, covered in white fur and large enough to span the space of a ten-tatami room, caught the thrashing cat with its hind legs. It whipped the beast around before wrapping it in a broad sheet of plastic-like webbing secreted from its abdomen. Another spider leaped from the trees and snatched up a Red-Eyed Wolf.
Some of the remaining monsters began veering toward us in their panic. At the same time, an eerie sound drifted from the woods to our right. When I turned, I saw three red points of light staring back at us from the darkness.
”Thomas!”
The red lights launched into the air the instant I screamed. Beside me, a bowstring twanged.
”Larry, Fireball!” Pamela shouted.
I climbed onto the coachman’s bench and poured mana into my hands, shaping the largest fireball I could manage.
I was too slow.
The Ice Snow Spider crashed down, completely covering Thomas and his horse.
Still holding the fireball, I jumped from the bench. I expected the spider to retreat when it saw me charging with magic—Pamela’s command certainly implied that—but the creature did not move at all.
The moment my feet hit the ground, I regretted leaving the safety of the driver’s seat.
With the spider covering Thomas, the remaining Bear-Forest-Cats and Red-Eyed Wolves changed course and vanished into the forest. Our horses panicked, rearing and screaming in terror.
”Damn it, what do I do?”
When I looked back, I saw Thomas crawling out from beneath the spider. Ten arrows from Kenze were buried throughout its body, from head to abdomen. Two had pierced those glowing red eyes, and several of its white, furry legs twitched in their final death throes.
That was when the Golems finally stepped in.
The monster stampede had ended, and the remaining spiders stood on high alert while guarding their captured prey. The Golems lifted the giant spider off Thomas, allowing both him and his horse to scramble free.
I held my breath. If the horse’s legs were broken, we would have to put it down, but it seemed unharmed.
As the Golems lowered the giant spider onto the road, the maid-engineers rushed forward. One reached into the creature’s rear and pulled out a thick strand of webbing, and the others immediately began reeling it in.
I was not the only one watching. The rest of the spider pack took one look at the Golems and split up. Some retreated into the forest on the right with their prey, while others vanished among the trees at impossible speed. Within moments, the road fell silent.
”Wow, look at this magic thread!” one of the maids exclaimed.
”Look, look! It’s so transparent. This is top-tier!”
”If we sold this, it’d easily go for over ten million yen!”
The maids were ecstatic. Following Pamela’s instructions, they severed the spider’s legs and lashed them to the cargo carriage. Pamela then sliced open the creature’s abdomen, revealing a sphere coated in thick fluid, which she carefully placed on our carriage.
”It’s an Ice Snow Spider egg,” she explained. “They’re in their spawning season, which is why they hunt in packs this time of year.”
These monsters were smarter than I had realized.
”As long as we have this egg, the others won’t attack.”
I had no idea whether that was true, but when we reached the next village, the local lord saw the egg and bought it from us for a fortune.
As it turned out, the magic thread was prized for its durability and low resistance. It was used in top-of-the-line Golems like the ones operated by Sonya and Lieutenant Louise. Since Ice Snow Spiders could not be farmed the way common Man-Eating Spiders could, the material was incredibly rare.
The legs sold well too. Pamela had boiled one for dinner once, and although it was so tough that my jaw hurt from chewing it, the flavor reminded me of a mix between crab and scallop. Apparently, it was meant to be boiled for dozens of hours, which was not exactly practical for a traveling group like ours.
After the attack, Onhart requested aerial reconnaissance more frequently, but the weather fought us every step of the way. Thick cloud cover hung overhead almost constantly, and sudden snowstorms could reduce visibility to nothing in seconds. The terrain up here was little more than flat ground broken by the occasional pond, so once the snow started falling, it was easy to lose all sense of direction.
We tried using torches, but they were far too weak to cut through the snowfall. After three failed scouting attempts, an idea finally struck me.
”What are you doing?”
During a rest stop, after the horses had been cared for, Kenze looked up from her usual place beside the fire, where she was still attached to my arm, and sounded genuinely annoyed.
”I need a favor, Kenze.”
I asked her to find a thick branch, split it in two, and carve both pieces into parallel rods with a narrow gap between them.
”Fine,” she muttered without even asking why.
While she was gone, I dug beneath the carriage seat and pulled out the pump circuitry I had built back in the Royal Capital. I had originally brought it to the defensive battle as a source of spare parts for the fixed-wing drones, and somehow I had ended up hauling it around ever since.
My mana acted much like an electron, except it did not short out in water. Using that property, I had built a voltage-boosting circuit—basically a Cockcroft-Walton circuit like the kind used in stun guns—that generated water currents through ioncraft and functioned as a pump.
If I could reproduce that discharge across a one-meter staff, it might work as a powerful light source.
It worked.
The following night, I fixed the split rods together, wired the circuit between them, and poured mana into the device.
Zap. Zap. Zap.
White and violet arcs of mana flickered between the rods. The maid-engineers were impressed, Sarah—my second lieutenant—actually praised me, and even Onhart and Thomas could only stare. The hostages, whom we had woken for dinner, gawped openly. Kenze whispered, “Amazing,” while Pamela applauded.
I carefully touched the light. It stung a little, but that was all. The mana flow was low enough that it could not seriously hurt anyone.
This might actually make a decent night-light.
Carried away by my success, I raised it toward the sky and shouted, “Excalibur!”
Everyone stared at me in complete silence.
The embarrassment hit immediately, and to make matters worse, the device had a major flaw.
The “Excalibur” Kenze had helped me build had overheated and effectively burned itself out.
”So,” Onhart asked as he approached the smoldering remains, “what exactly do you use that ‘Excalibur’ thing for?”
”It’s a light,” I replied, keeping my expression neutral. “Something visible from a long distance. Bright enough for a fixed-wing drone to spot us.”
”I see,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s a shame it doesn’t last longer.”
He was not wrong, but being stuck with the name Excalibur was painfully embarrassing.
After a bit more testing, I learned that the wooden “core” did not need to be anything special. A fallen branch worked perfectly well as long as it produced a discharge. If the facing sides were flattened, however, the brightness increased dramatically. I also discovered that continuous discharge burned the thing out in about thirty seconds, but when I made it blink instead, the wooden core lasted much longer and was far easier to spot from the air.
I could not be certain because of the distance involved, but when a small pack of Red-Eyed Wolves fled shortly after I activated the light, I began to suspect it might also have some effect on monsters.
The only real problem was that everyone had started calling it Excalibur. Since I could not think of a better name myself, I eventually gave up arguing about it. Either way, the light allowed the fixed-wing drone to spot us clearly, and we stopped getting lost in the snow.
Nine days after parting ways with the Emperor’s group in Milisky, we left a small village and noticed something unusual. Until then, we had only seen another carriage every few days, but within an hour of leaving town, three merchant caravans passed us heading the other way.
The fourth carriage belonged to a local merchant, so I asked Kenze to speak with them.
”The road between the border town of Velysk and Bryachislavichi Port is in poor condition,” Kenze reported after a short conversation. “Apparently, most travelers are taking a road farther south and doubling back, even though it adds extra time.”
”Can you ask exactly how bad it is?” I said.
Kenze continued speaking with the merchant for a while.
”Dasvidaniya2,” the merchant said before steering his carriage away.
”He doesn’t know the details himself,” Kenze explained, “but he’s heard the road maintenance is terrible. Taking the detour stretches the trip from five days to eight.”
Onhart and Thomas walked over, and the three of us discussed our options.
”We were originally scheduled for a two-week trip, but we’re on pace to reach Velysk in ten days,” I said. “If the road beyond takes five more days, we’ll reach Bryachislavichi Port on the first day of the thirteenth month. If that happens, we can make it home without wintering over.”
Everyone wanted that outcome. If we ended up spending the winter at Bryachislavichi Port, there was always the possibility that the Rus Emperor might change his mind and try to capture us.
”Let’s wake Igor-dono and ask him.”
Igor-dono was the lord of the Polotsk Principality, where Bryachislavichi Port was located, so he seemed like the best source of information.
”The problem is probably the lake and marsh district,” Duke Igor said after being abruptly awakened. According to him, once we left Velysk and entered the Polotsk Principality, we would pass through a region filled with lakes and marshland. Beyond that lay the town of Nekuze, and the road from there to Bryachislavichi Port should be fine.
”If nobody else is coming through, that’s actually convenient for us,” Sarah, my second lieutenant, said with her usual military confidence. “If necessary, we can just build a road with the Golems.”
With that, most of the concern hanging over the group disappeared, replaced by excitement at the thought of finally going home.
Carried along by that optimism, we reached Velysk, reduced our reserve horses from five to three, sold most of our remaining salt, bought food and fodder, and departed for the Polotsk Principality the very same day.
The road started out straight but gradually twisted between lakes and marshes. We had clearly entered the wetland district, and somewhere along the way we had crossed the border as well.
For once, the clouds parted and revealed the moon. Standing beside the lake, with moonlight reflecting across the water and fresh snow covering the shore and surrounding conifer forest, I felt as though I had stepped into a fairy tale.
Come to think of it, tonight is December twenty-third. Christmas Eve would be tomorrow back on Earth. This world’s calendar had a thirteenth month, so the date probably meant nothing here, but I still found myself wondering whether Finland—the place people claimed Santa Claus lived—looked anything like this.
”Did something good happen?” Kenze asked, tilting her head.
”I was just thinking we’ll be home soon.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
”I see. That’s true.”
Her voice dropped slightly.
Only then did it hit me. Kenze no longer had a home to return to. It was a harmless lie, but I regretted it the moment I said it.
”Don’t worry about it,” I said quietly.
Perhaps she had guessed what I was thinking, because she leaned against me while holding the child and spoke in a surprisingly gentle voice.
”Kenze, your home can be that house in the Royal Capital,” I said. “You can raise the child there.”
She looked up at me.
”Between the village where your wife lives and the house in the Royal Capital, which one is your home?”
She meant Strock Village, where Monica and my sister-in-law lived.
”Both, I suppose.”
”That’s unfair.”
”You think so?”
”Then my home is you.”
She had a way of saying things that left me speechless.
”You idiot,” I muttered. “What are you going to do if I die?”
”I’ll find a new one.”
That was probably the healthiest answer she could have given.
”If I die, stay in the house in the Royal Capital until you find that new one,” I said. “I’ve already asked Marie to free you and Pamela from slavery and let you stay there until you’ve decided what to do next.”
”You’re an idiot.”
”I know.”
I patted her head, and she reached up toward my lips.
Clouds rolled in during the middle of the night, and before long snow was falling heavily. Although I was off duty, I could not sleep and spent most of the night staring outside.
By the time dawn arrived—or what passed for dawn this far north—the snowfall had stopped. Snow had piled up to just below our knees.
The fresh snow was still loose enough for the carriages to move through, but just to be safe, Onhart, Thomas, and I took turns walking ahead and checking the road. I think everyone shared the same unpleasant thought: we might still end up wintering over at Bryachislavichi Port.
After advancing only five kilometers, we came upon a scene that immediately killed our optimism.
A river roughly twenty-five meters wide cut across the road, and the suspension bridge spanning it—just over thirty meters long—was leaning dangerously to one side.
It looked as though the weight of the snow that had accumulated overnight had damaged it.
”We’ll have to turn back and take the southern route,” I said, convinced there was no other choice.
Nobody agreed.
”If we clear the snow and repair it, it’ll be fine,” one of the engineers insisted.
”The structure is simple enough,” Sarah added. “We have five engineers. We can handle it.”
”Are you really giving up already?”
So we started by removing the snow piled across the bridge. Even tilted as it was, the structure remained stable enough for people to stand on.
In fact, crossing on foot was not difficult at all, and with everyone working together, the snow disappeared surprisingly quickly.
Next, we reinforced the main suspension rope using roughly half of the Ice Snow Spider silk—material supposedly worth tens of millions of yen.
After that came the hanger ropes suspended from the main cable. Since human strength was not enough for the job, we used the Golems to position and secure them.
The girders were still not perfectly level, but by evening the repairs were complete.
Kenze crossed first on horseback to watch for monsters on the far bank in Sarah’s place. Next came the carriage carrying Onhart, which reached the other side without incident.
The hostages, maids, and reserve horses followed.
Everything seemed fine.
Then the Golems began crossing, with Sarah driving the cargo wagon behind them. They reached the halfway point without any sign of trouble.
Snap.
Just as the cargo wagon’s horses were about to clear the bridge, a sickening crack echoed through the air.
The main suspension cable consisted of several ropes twisted together, and one of them had just broken.
The remaining lines stretched taut, and the bridge immediately began to tilt. Sarah reacted at once, ordering the Golems down into the riverbed to support the structure from below. Somehow, they managed to keep the bridge stable long enough for the cargo wagon to reach the far side.
Relief had barely begun to set in when one of the main ropes finally gave way completely.
Then another failure followed.
The pillar supporting the remaining cables could not bear the strain. It snapped with a deafening crack, and the bridge, suddenly stripped of its support, swung like a pendulum. The massive girders slammed into the Golems that had nearly cleared the crossing before the entire structure collapsed into the river below.
When I looked up, the road simply ended a few meters ahead of my carriage.
The only people left on this side were me, Pamela, and Thomas.
Across the river, I could hear Kenze shouting.
”Larry! Larry!”
—
Summary:
The group travels north after parting with the Emperor, while Kenze clings to the protagonist due to trauma regarding The Boltechino. A massive migration of monsters fleeing from Ice Snow Spiders forces the party into a dangerous ambush. After the protagonist and the Golems defeat the spiders, he uses his engineering skills to create a makeshift magical light source for the team. The success of the device leads to a moment of social embarrassment when he shouts “Excalibur” to the void.
The group’s attempt to cross a damaged suspension bridge leads to a catastrophic structural failure. After successfully maneuvering part of their caravan across, a main rope snaps, causing the bridge to collapse and leaving Larry, Pamela, and Thomas stranded on the near side. Kenze and the rest of the party are cut off on the opposite bank.
—
Trivia:
Ice Snow Spiders hunt in packs during their spawning season for nutritional replenishment.
The spider’s magic thread is highly valued for top-tier Golems and is difficult to obtain due to the lack of successful farming.
Spider leg meat tastes like crab and scallops but is extremely tough unless boiled for over ten hours.
The light device is powered by a Cockcroft-Walton circuit using mana-based ion-craft.
The group is traversing a calendar system that includes a thirteenth month.
The “Excalibur” is a improvised technological light source that doubles as a monster deterrent.
Ice-snow spider silk is a highly expensive, rare resource utilized for critical repairs.
The party has been using golems to assist with heavy manual labor, including road work and bridge repair.
—
Translation Notes:
Notes:
• Thomas – Thomas Bauer is a hulking, middle-aged Bizan Major and former Schuberitz officer with a wrestler build, red face, and scalp burns. Serving as a pragmatic mercenary and spear-wielding commander under a suspended death sentence, he trains thirty recruits to professionalize their combat skills. Despite poor discipline and envying the protagonist’s close bonds, he possesses strategic, agricultural, and military expertise. He now leads an offensive to consolidate the Kane territory, using calculated opportunism to consult the protagonist’s group about his ambition to declare independence and establish his own lordship.
• Kenze – Denis is a muscular, agile former Tashkurgan intelligence agent wearing a niqab and slave crest. Traumatized by her homeland’s ruin and Boltechino, this emotionally unstable archer and crafter is fiercely attached to her master Earnest and Larry, but was tasked to kill the protagonist, likely by Marie. Left at the collapsed bridge, Earnest now wishes she were present for tactical assessment.
• Onhart – Tall, stern, and pragmatic, Onhart von Lothringen is a Duke’s eldest son, third in line to the Schuberitz throne, and a Lieutenant Colonel leading the traveling party. To hide his identity, he acts as Roberto de Calimen, a caravan leader and acting father figure to the protagonist. Knowledgeable and authoritative, he manages rear-carriage hostages and logistics while coordinating with Schuberitz.
• Pamela – An arrogant yet composed petite Elven Mage, academy student, and the protagonist’s teasing Primary Wife. Serving as a loyal companion, mediator, and advisor alongside Larry and Kenze, she hides her ears and a slave crest under white Gothic Lolita fashion. This observant Arsenal Bureau resident handles logistics, security, and Golem operations, utilizing high magical aptitude and memory manipulation.
• Al – Alberto (Al), a massive red‑haired man recently wed to Mary, lives near the Dish Basin. He’s a companion of Hans, helping intimidate and rally elders as a villager and leader.
• Wolf – The family name carried by Adolf, the influential underworld figure who controls the secret establishment visited by the Lieutenant Colonel.
• Larry – A 14-year-old Japanese reincarnated soldier and cynical academy professor with dark, unkempt hair and practical traveling gear, he resembles an infant Griselda. The pragmatic protagonist, drone designer, and Golem combat strategist commands a carriage party in post-rebellion frontier lands. Married to Marie and acting as Pamela’s magical companion, he hides vulnerability behind a detached, tactical outlook.
• Louise – A female South Bohemia Lieutenant and Magic Armored Division member who operates a top-tier Type 95 Golem, setting an operational baseline for the protagonist. Reminiscent of Elga, she is expecting the protagonist’s child, taught him a military salute, and provides poll tax war exemption info.
• Sonya – Former Schuberitz Kingdom Major Sonya is a sharp-eared, petite, muscular elven commander who led magical battalions, including the 101st Golem Battalion against the Amazoness. Now Larry’s Golem combat instructor, this top-tier pilot benchmarks the protagonist’s power. Masked as a cheerful talent scout, she hides a cruel, sadistic “gal” persona, using mind-reading and painful mana injections to toy with him.
• Sarah – A heavily pierced Elf Mage and Second Lieutenant who commands the Magic Corps and controls specialized golem labor. Identifiable by her facial piercings, pointed ears, and long dark hair, this disciplined tactician and skilled pilot restrains Kenze and partners with Thomas in his strategic ambitions, despite having previously insulted Thomas’s intelligence by labeling him a brute-headed brawler.
• Sara – A woman with numerous gold piercings in her ears, eyebrows, and nose, often wearing thick, aggressive makeup. She serves as the Second Lieutenant and Commander of the First Company.
• Rus – A nation that annexed the Kingdom of Larland.
• Igor – A captive Polotsk Duke of the Bryachislavichi line, held hostage with the imperial family during transit. As a devoted prince and protector, he prioritizes the throne’s safety over his own standing. He leverages his status as lord of the principality to aid his captors by providing crucial intelligence regarding the difficult terrain ahead.
• Principal – The mother of Line and the administrative head of the institution. She exercises authoritative control over research assignments and seeks to trade Larry for Ilse Klein due to interpersonal conflicts in her laboratories. The mother of Sabrina and Rhein who intervenes during Rhein’s violent corridor assault to break up the confrontation.
• Monica – Sun-tanned and slender with a missing front tooth, this dark-skinned, tomboyish 15-year-old is a free-born acquaintance of the protagonist’s sister-in-law. She lives in Larry’s Strock Village as his strong-willed wife, mother of twins (including Alisa), and wet-nurse to her niece Maria. Haunted by losing her first husband at Vod Fortress, she rules her house with direct, bitter authority.
• Marie – Larry’s sharp-tongued Strock Village partner is a Magic Academy student, lab employee, and postpartum manager on maternity leave raising her child in the Royal Capital. Ange’s mother, Darina’s peer, and Manuela’s former Bizan Magic School friend, she keeps hair as a talisman. She issued the request for Kenze to kill the protagonist, who is actually her husband sharing a close, affectionate bond.
• Mar – A battle‑hardened veteran, clad in worn armor, uses door panels as shields and captures enemy crossbows; Larry’s comrade who teases him about his sister‑in‑law’s pampering, known as Martin to his companion Edmond.
Please bookmark this series and rate ☆☆☆☆☆ on here!
Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
Leave a Reply