The New Gate

“(They’re people too, of course, and I realized that a little late.)”

Milt, who told him about what had happened since she came here, responded to Shin.

“(Did you have a story that made you think that?)”

“(It’s like they made me change my perception. I didn’t have any special story or anything like that. It’s just that Sety was thinking about a lot of things. When you see her in her everyday life, knowing what she is doing, you can see her in a different light.)”

“(What do you mean by that?)”

Did something happen? Shin thought about it, but he couldn’t think of anything.

“(Look, you said that you set up Sety as a younger sister character, right? For her part, it seems like there are times when she acts subconsciously, and times when she acts consciously. She seemed troubled at first, but now she doesn’t worry about which one is the real her, she accepts that they are both as her true self. She has given a clear answer to her own existence. To me, that was a little dazzling.)”

“(I didn’t know you thought that way.)”

Shin wondered if Schnee and the others were troubled in the same way as Milt’s story.

The friction between the personality character given as a game setting and the self-consciousness of this world. Shin did not realize that Schnee and the others had such problems, even though he had been with them longer than Milt.

It may simply be that they have resolved themselves over the course of 500 years and have not come to the surface enough for Shin to notice.

He wouldn’t have known about Sety if he hadn’t asked Milt.

In that sense, Filma, who had been asleep for so long, was the one to worry about, but Shin was not confident that he would be able to find out, since she seemed to be the best at hiding it.

“(I feel like 500 years isn’t just a time span. I need to be more mature too.)”

“(Well, in terms of age, Milt is—)”

Just when Shin was thinking that she was already in the realm of an old woman in human terms, he received a silent body blow.

Even if you were on good terms with someone, it was taboo to talk about age with women. Milt gave him a big smile, and Shin apologized to her.

Sety approached them and asked in a tone of exasperation.

“What are you two doing?”

“I made a slight slip of the tongue. By the way, has anything been decided?”

Shin asked if they had decided where they were going and had come to call for him.

“We’ve got a few options, and I thought we’d get your input, Shin.”

Several maps were spread out on the table, and on top of them were several oval glass balls about one cemel in size.

“The blue glass balls are for countries and cities that focus on tourism, while the red ones have a slightly different scenery or have delicious food. What else do you want to do? The destination will be decided by that.”

Sety gave a rough explanation while working on the map.

“Hmm, can you tell me about the tourist attractions?”

There were many kinds of tourist destinations. There were six blue glass balls placed on the map. Of the map that divided the continent into upper and lower parts, there were four on the Est side at the top and two on the Kern side at the bottom.

The information seemed to have been provided by Schnee, who explained.

“The two on the upper side of Est. This is the country where the hot springs are located. I’ve actually been there, so I’m sure of it. On one side, there was also a lot of blacksmithing. There was also a pool that used geothermal heat.”

Schnee had been there before, apparently, when she was asked to help with a survey of the volcano.

Next, Shibaid pointed to a glass bead.

“Of the remaining two, this one is a country with a botanical garden with a collection of rare plants. The other one is the one with the fire and ice tree.”

“Fire and ice trees?”

Shin couldn’t help but ask the unfamiliar words.

“When Shin was still around, there were plants where the entire tree was literally made of fire and ice, right? It would have had little impact on its surroundings and would have been valuable as a material.”

“Ah, that.”

Shin pulled out the relevant information from his memory of the game era.

The official names were Holy Flame Tree and Holy Ice Tree. The plant grew just like a real tree, with roots, trunk, branches, and leaves made of fire on one side and ice on the other.

Aside from the ice, Shin could not explain well what fire with substance was like, but the Holy Flame Tree was a tree that burns but had a kind of soft core in the center.

In the game era, it was treated as a material item that randomly appeared somewhere in the area.

The scene that the discoverer saw was a lone tree growing alone in the middle of a plain forest, without the surrounding area burning or freezing.

“You don’t think there’s more than one of those things growing there? It sure seems like a sight to behold.”

The Holy Flame Tree changed the color of its fire depending on the time of day, and the Holy Ice Tree glowed seven different colors depending on the amount of sunlight. It was said that they were famous for their beautiful appearance.

“Sorry to interrupt. What about the rest?”

“One on the Kern side is a country guarded by dragons. It seems that the dragon likes the princess, and she can enjoy traveling in the air by riding on their small dragon. It’s close to the sea so you can also go cruising. And the last one is an amusement park.”

“An amusement park?”

Shin couldn’t help but ask Filma about the words, which he had never heard of here before.

“It looks like the facility from before the ‘Dusk of Majesty’ is still standing. Sety has the information.”

It was apparently true that Sety had been gathering information outside of the “Orchard,” the Pixie settlement, as well.

And she seemed to have been participating in the discussion in parallel with 【Mind Chat】 while following up with Tiera.

“How big is it, Sety?”

“It’s like a small city. The royal family lives in a castle that stands in the middle. There’s something like a basket that moves at high speed on rails, and other vehicles that make you feel like you’ve traveled to different countries in an instant. There are also some things I don’t really understand.”

Additionally, the outer walls surrounding the amusement park were built using past technology, so it was said to be safe even if a horde of monsters charged in.

The country built its own defense wall in the form of an amusement park inside. In terms of land area inhabited by people, it seemed to be one of the largest on the continent.

“It looks like something that would be built by ‘Dreamland’ or ‘Fiction = Non-Fiction’.”

Shin was referring to famous guilds that were often mentioned to build an attraction facility among production guilds.

The “Dreamland” side tinkered with the underlying data of the objects, and managed to create an amusement park in the game that was indistinguishable from the real thing. The result was so good that the game management praised it.

However, it was too similar to the real amusement park, and no matter how they tried to explain it, it was out of the question due to copyright issues.

Just when they were on the verge of a lawsuit, the original amusement park unexpectedly contacted them, and some of the facilities were allowed to continue for publicity purposes.

The other guild, “Fiction = Nonfiction,” was mainly engaged in the production of attractions that incorporate magic, which is impossible in real life.

Judging from the characteristics of both guilds, Shin thought that it would be the “Dreamland” that built the amusement park that Sety mentioned.

“I think if I were to go, I’d go to a hot spring, but what do you all think?”

“I’m in favor. It’s soothing not only for the body, but also for the mind.”

“Hmm, that’s a good one.”

Shin asked, and Schnee and Shibaid immediately agreed.

The baths at the Moon Shrine were among the finest in the world, but this was a different story. Even if the composition of the water was the same, when it came to hot springs, the healing effect was different.

Milt nodded her head in agreement and spoke to Shin in 【Mind Chat】.

“(Actually, I have never been to a hot spring. I heard that table tennis is the best thing to do after a bath.)”

“(Hot springs are great. I don’t know about table tennis though.)”

Milt, who was bedridden most of her life in real life, seemed to think of table tennis when she thought of hot springs because of her knowledge from manga and video games.

“I was curious about the dragons, but now that Shin is going, there is going to be a commotion, isn’t there?”

Since Filma’s expression and the tone of her voice indicated that the comment was made out of mischief, not malice, Shin responded with a slight overreaction.

“Don’t jinx it!”

“How can you be so sure there’s nothing going on?”

“Guh… I can’t say for sure.”

Shin could only offer a feeble rebuttal, as the probability of trouble was high.

“(Tiera said she was fine with the hot springs, but I’m more interested in the amusement park.)”

Sety spoke for Tiera’s opinion via 【Mind Chat】.

Sety, who provided the information, had never been to an amusement park herself, and her curiosity was piqued. Tiera, on the other hand, seemed to have calmed down from the agitation she felt when she heard Shin’s story, and she preferred not to do anything that required her to move around.

“(Let’s go to the hot springs this time.)”

Shin decided after asking everyone’s opinion.

Hot springs were originally in the majority, and it was a reasonable decision.

The other places could be visited at another time, possibly after the hot springs.

Since Filma and Sety were not particular about where they wanted to go, they decided on a destination first. All that remained was to decide which of the options to go to.

“Which one is bigger?”

“This one is bigger. It’s a country of considerable size.”

Schnee’s slender finger pointed to a multi-ethnic nation called “Kurikara” located slightly northwest of the center of the continent. It was a commercial country, and although it had a king, he was not an absolute authority, and it seemed that the heads of influential trading companies and talented engineers were also involved in national politics.

The other was “Madereni” located northeast of the center of the continent, which was also a commercial country. It was about one third the size of Kurikara, and was still developing. It was originally a successful development project funded by Kurikara merchants, and it seemed that the hot springs were discovered by chance.

“In that case, I guess we should go to Kurikara. The name sounds Japanese, do you know anything about it?”

“I’ve never heard of a guild house being built anywhere like Hinomoto, so maybe the first representative was a player like Shin.”

Shin didn’t understand the meaning of the words, but he did know that there was a Japanese word for Kurikara. However, he didn’t remember any famous guilds with the same name.

“Well then, we’ll decide on our next destination as Kurikara.”

With no objections from the members, the destination was decided.

Next, they considered the approximate route they would take. As they exchanged opinions on this and that, the night was passing by.

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