Chapter 38: Machine City Mikania

I’d said we’d ask the clown about Rene’s past, but he didn’t actually know much.

Apparently, back when his circus troupe was performing in a land much farther south than this one, a girl who looked a lot like her had come to watch their show.

She’d been sitting in the front row, enjoying herself so much that he’d invited her onto the stage to participate as a guest. He’d asked for her name then, and that was why he remembered it... or so he claimed.

He’d actually said a few more things, but to be perfectly blunt, they were pointless ramblings that weren’t worth listening to.

Because, to begin with, every last word was a lie.

As for how he knew Rene’s name, he’d either eavesdropped on our conversations using magic or something similar, or gone around asking questions in the vicinity of Zalfedahl.

It was precisely because Rene was connected to the “World Eater” that he’d taken advantage of her amnesia to approach her.

Dear players... especially those of you in the theory-crafting community, I imagine you’re scratching your heads over this. But 99% of the words that come out of this clown’s mouth are lies.

"Still, this place is incredible. So this is a machine city..."

『Heh-heh! This is the most advanced machine civilization in all of “Chaos”! Behold, Machine City Mikania!』

Once we’d finished hearing what the clown had to say about Rene, the conversation moved on to something else.

And naturally, that something else was the machine city.

The moment we entered, we were greeted by a sci-fi landscape that could only be described as “another world.”

Robots zipped through the air, enormous skyscrapers towered everywhere, and holograms played all sorts of commercials and informational displays.

There were areas packed with all kinds of incomprehensible machinery and factories, chaotic and cluttered beyond belief.

On the other hand, there were also districts filled with beautiful gardens, each one meticulously designed down to the smallest detail.

It would be incredibly difficult not to be amazed by a sight like this.

"Hey, Minia. Why is it called a ‘city’ in the first place? Why not something else?"

This machine city was larger than an entire country.

So why did it continue to call itself a “city,” despite not belonging to any country at all?

When Kizuna-kun asked, Minia began explaining as if she’d been waiting for the question all along.

『Well, you see—』

Machine City Mikania. Originally, it was an enormous artificial habitat designed for life in space, constructed in a certain world—in other words, a space colony.

In that world, both “magic” and “science” had advanced at an astonishing rate. Even after their home planet became a dead world, humanity didn’t go extinct. Instead, they ventured into space and continued to prosper.

Humanity’s domain continued to expand, and at the same time, the vastness of space gradually became divided among several large-scale groups. Some regions unified under a single nation, others formed federations of nations, and still others became economic prosperity zones, alliances, and all sorts of other arrangements. The once-unpartitioned universe was divided up in the blink of an eye.

In the end, even after leaving their homeworld behind, humanity hadn’t changed all that much. The setting had merely shifted from the ground to outer space, while power struggles and wars continued to repeat themselves.

...Apparently, things eventually escalated to the point where the world itself collapsed.

However, amid all that chaos, there were people who alone escaped destruction and made their way to another world: Chaos.

Those people were the inhabitants of Mikania—the people of the space colony Mikania.

A certain research institution on Mikania had been working on developing special armor capable of repelling every kind of external threat.

As the war intensified, Mikania adopted that special armor for the colony’s outer surface. It was still unfinished, and the materials it used were far too precious, but they went ahead with it “for the sake of experimentation,” disregarding both cost and effectiveness.

That was the kind of place Mikania was. It had originally operated as a research colony for a certain country, but because it attracted nothing but eccentric oddballs, it had become a research city that was largely left to its own devices.

...As a result, when the universe collapsed, Mikania alone remained unharmed. It then happened to drift into “Chaos,” a world that had continued to expand by absorbing other worlds.

『—And that’s the story! Simple, isn’t it? In the truest sense of the word, this place really is a “city.” The country it originally belonged to is gone, though!』

The people of this city of research had never wanted to be part of a nation. As long as everyone could continue their research, they believed that was enough.

And so, Mikania was a city, not a country. It had always been that way, and it would remain that way.

"Man, I have no idea what any of that means. What even is ‘space’?"

"Don’t worry, Padron. I don’t get it either, nya."

It seemed that the inhabitants of this fantasy world were completely baffled by the explanation.

The truth is, I didn’t really understand it all that well myself.

Well, that’s just how it goes.