Chapter 111

Rokuko’s State and the Speaker Golem

Ah, come to think of it, I didn’t tell Rokuko about me becoming the village chief huh.

I headed to Rokuko’s room, entering inside as I knocked.

“Ufufufufu.”

Rokuko was fiddling with and gazing at the red ring on her left hand’s ring finger with a big grin on her face. It’s a spectacle I’ve gotten mostly used to seeing recently… I heard an auditory illusion of Haku-san’s footsteps, so I almost instinctively turned around and prostrated. Today’s mental rehearsal went perfectly today as well… please at least spare my life.

I called out for her since she hadn’t noticed me after a few seconds.

“Ooi, Rokuko?”

“Huh!? W-wai—, you should knock on the door before you come in you know! You should wait for a response first you know! This is a maiden’s room you know!?”

Rokuko hid her left hand behind her in a panic. You didn’t answer me even though I knocked… come to think of it.

“Ah, my bad my bad. I wanted to talk about something.”

“Eh, about what…? Wait, let me prepare my heart.”

“Alright, but it’s just normal business stuff? I don’t know what you’re thinking about. Definitely not. Well, I’m the village chief now.”

I decided to quickly report my business to Rokuko who’d started blushing and rush back to my room.

How’d this happen?

I don’t particularly recall raising a flag with Rokuko.

At best, I just drove those bandits from the dungeon, expanded the dungeon, and built the inn.

Was it something to do with buying those melon rolls?

… Maybe dungeon cores just have a tendency to fall for their dungeon masters by themselves or something…

“Wait, Kehma. Village chief?”

Ah. She stopped me.

“Yeah, there’ve been more people around here recently right? That’s why everyone decided for the village to be a proper one, I’d become the village chief.”

“Nn, in other words, that means Kehma is the most awesome of the humans, then? Well, obviously, my dungeon’s here.”

“… As for me, I just want to push all of the troublesome things onto other people if possible though… thinking about it properly, the village chief is the one in the position of pushing troublesome things onto others.”

The ones to push troublesome things onto heroes were village chiefs.

Although they were also at the position where troublesome things would come flying towards them, since I can’t leave from here as the dungeon master, the eternal formula is that the village’s problems are my problems. Let’s give up quietly about it.

“Nn? But since you’re the village chief now, what about the inn?”

“Nothing will really change from how it is now… is what I want to say, however, where I live is a problem… The village chief renting a room from the inn because he doesn’t have a house is weird in a lot of ways.”

“Aah, then I’ll also move when Kehma builds a house.”

“… Eh? Rokuko, this inn is a house though?”

“Eh?”

Rather, even if I built a basic house, since the village is entirely within the dungeon’s area, even if it’s called a house it’s like a room. The dungeon’s functions are really practical here.

“Oh, that’s right huh.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll add on a lodge to the inn since moving would be troublesome…? Having to walk to the inn every day sounds troublesome too.”

“That sounds great. Like a dormitory?”

“Yeah, like that.”

Externally, we’re going with the pretense that I got permission to build an annex onto the inn from its owner. It’ll become both the village chief’s residence and a lodge. How about we promptly go and ask for Narikin’s help?

There probably won’t be any complaints from that party of leaders, but let’s just push it through with the village chief’s authority if there’re any complaints. Even if I’m just a figurehead, I am the village head after all.

“Ah, make my room in in the village chief’s residence area too! It’ll be a piece of cake for Kehma right?”

“… Well alright, you sure?”

The village chief’s residence huh, should I make it a little big? There’s still a lot of grounds left to use.

*

Well then, I thought of something concerning magic practice. I wondered about whether or not golems could be used for that as well.

I presume it’ll be used as a record player.

I mean, even though it’d be great if I could just buy something like a voice recorder with DP, for some reason it looks like I can’t buy any kind of gadget that a computer would contain with DP. Maybe it’s the transistors? Transistors are no good then I guess.

… Still though, there’s a record player that isn’t a computer in the catalog. But it’s an incredible 1,000,000 DP. That’s why I decided to make one myself.

The structure of a record player isn’t something that complicated. Engraving sounds as grooves from the oscillations in them, the speaker would just vibrate according to the grooves to reproduce the sounds.

Then how would I do that with golems?

It’s easy, I’d make the speaker itself into a golem, the golem would just need to memorize the vibrations.

Then how would I make the speaker?

That was even easier. Using paper and hide as a film, it could mimic sounds by vibrating at the precise frequencies. Even a paper cup telephone could be a splendid speaker. In other words, I could simply use 5 DP for twelve paper cups and turn them into golems to be some speakers, then they would be able to become record players.

“Alright, how about we experiment a bit?”

I used Create Golem on a paper cup. After it easily turned into a golem, I held the cup like it was a telephone.

“Record the following vibrations… Nn, ahem. Testing, testing. What fine weather we’re having today… Stop recording. Now, reproduce the recorded vibrations. ”

Nn, ahem. Testing, testing. What fine weather we’re having today.

A quiet version of my voice came from the paper cup. Success! It recorded it all.

When I made it reproduce the vibrations louder, it turned into almost the same volume as my original voice. Also a success.

… Then, next up is looking into exactly to what extent it can memorize.

“Right now is the first vibration set. Next is the second—”

For the results, the paper cup-type speaker golem was able to record twenty seconds in total. When I tried to record any more than that, it would forget the first one… This was much, much more difficult order than the usual ones.

Well, if it’s twenty seconds, it should be able to record magic incantations huh.

Since saying record and the like each time was also troublesome, I also drew on record and replay buttons. It would record when the record button was touched or replay the recorded sound when the replay button was touched. Doing that limited the recording’s duration to eighteen seconds.

… There really is a memory limit for orders huh… Up till now I’ve just been using simple orders like Dig here so I didn’t know. This was also a good result to the experiment.

Well, next let’s try recording a magic’s incantation. First up is water.

“Oh water, become a small globe. Water.”

Since a sphere of water appeared in the air above the golem, I stopped the recording… and caught it in the paper cup golem I was holding in my hand so it wouldn’t fall on the floor.

I swallowed it.

Oh water, become a small globe. Water.

… Ah, guess it was able to play it back despite being wet.

This paper cup golem can be used both as a speaker and as a cup. What a useful fellow.

“At any rate, looks like it still can’t use magic huh…”

Let’s hand this golem with the Water incantation memorized to Ichika for now. Nerune should already know it.

If she reviews it herself, she should be able to recreate the magic’s incantation while it’s playing… Ah, I just thought of something. Let’s divide the receiver and speaker to make it like a telephone. It should be easier to use like that.

… What was that magic Nerune couldn’t remember, again?