Reincarnated into a Game As the Hero’s Friend

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In my entire life here, or at the very least from the time I regained my memory of the past life, I didn’t remember ever experiencing any natural disaster. The closest thing to a natural disaster that I had experienced was some poor harvests, but even that wasn’t something huge to the point of making the citizens starve. I had no recollection of natural disasters that could wipe out an entire village like starvation, famine, or floods.

It made sense for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions to not be recorded in any of the records I had read. After all, even Mount Fuji hadn’t erupted in hundreds of years. The lack of earthquakes could be explained as a difference in the geographical features of this world and Japan. Lastly, the lack of famine in a decade or so of my life in this world could be just a coincidence.

But for there to be no storm, flood, or snowstorm large enough to destroy houses in the past hundred years? That wasn’t normal.

There was a slight possibility that Zeavert County was extremely lucky, so for the past hundreds of years, no natural disaster had occurred in the county. But if natural disasters had occurred in other noble territories, the diaries of past counts would have mentioned it. Yet, I didn’t find anything even in the diaries. That would mean no natural disaster had ever occurred in the entire kingdom for the past few hundred years. That didn’t make sense.

It was true that there were not many natural disasters in the old RPG games. Even an event like a flood that made the protagonist unable to cross the roads was usually resolved by defeating the boss. Well, I guess, as a player, I wouldn’t want some random natural disaster to stop my progress, so I understood why the developers rarely added natural disasters in the old RPG games. 

But this world was no longer a game world. This was a real world where people lived with nature just like in my previous world, so how come there wasn’t any natural disaster in this world? An explanation that ‘it was because this world was a fantasy world’ didn’t cut it.

Come to think of it, some of the things in this world that I had thought were strange might be connected to this. I put the book away and started to trace my thoughts.

In my previous world, it could be said that science started from people’s wish to understand nature. For example, astronomy in Ancient Egypt was derived from people’s observation of the stars to determine when the Nile River would flood or when to start sowing seeds.

Early astronomy relied only on the observation of the position of the stars and, eventually, the idea of measuring and predicting the position of the stars developed, which catalyzed mathematics to develop even more. Similarly, alchemy was how chemistry was derived.

There was no ‘astronomy’ or ‘alchemy’ subject in the academy. I wasn’t interested in both of them, so I used to not care if they exist or not in the academy’s curriculum, but now that I think more deeply, it was strange that these 2 subjects didn’t exist. There were only practical subjects like herbology, trade, and engineering in the academy, while for some reason, subjects related to natural science were barely taught in the academy.

This kingdom had the technology to build that kind of aqueduct, yet for some reason, the mathematics in this world was very behind. In my opinion, people of this world only knew ‘arithmetics’, not ‘mathematics’. Maybe the powerful people of this world had a monopoly on ‘advanced’ knowledge. That was why the people of this world seemed to be behind… No, I didn’t think that was the only reason… Then…

Perhaps ‘demons’ were the replacement for ‘natural disasters’ in this world?

Nature was dangerous in my previous world, which was why people tried to understand it, but for the people of this world, nature was just a harmless ‘water, air, and soil’ while demons were the ones that were dangerous.

Here, a lot of people died because of demon outbreaks and demon attacks not because of floods and famines. That was why the people of this world neglected natural science and instead focused their effort on magic and magic tools, things that could help them fight demons.

I had always thought that people of this world were all muscle-brained, but maybe I felt like that simply because the things needed to survive in my previous world and here were very different. In my opinion, being ‘muscle-brained’ was needed so that the people of this world could survive the demons, as opposed to my previous life where you needed to be ‘smart’ to understand nature in order to survive.

But if astronomy didn’t develop in this world, why did an astrolabe exist in the Star Counting Tower? I remembered the old man Uwe explaining in the game that he had discovered it from his research of the Ancient Kingdom… Wait…

Talking about the Ancient Kingdom, I remembered the ruins made in the era of the Ancient Kingdom were really sturdy. You needed to know advanced math besides architectural knowledge to build things sturdy enough that it could still stand even now.

In the first place, what were dungeons? Not all dungeons of this world were tombs, so to define dungeons as mass tombs wasn’t right.

Then, dungeons were built underground here, but why? Was it because something happened on the surface that made it unsafe so the ancient people built dungeons underground? That ‘something’… was it a natural disaster?

What if… what we considered dungeons now were, in fact, ‘disaster shelters’. The herbs that didn’t rot and out-of-this-world equipment that could be found in the dungeon were a ‘survival supply’ for the ‘shelters’.

If this world actually had the technology to build a sturdy underground facility on the level of the dungeons, then the kingdom should have also considered building another underground facility as one of the countermeasures against the demon army. But the kingdom didn’t do that. The ‘underground facility’ that existed in the kingdom was only at the level of the basement prison and underground mine.

This would mean the kingdom didn’t have the knowledge and technology needed to create underground facilities like the dungeons, even though they could create underground mines. Would that mean…the majority of knowledge and technology of the Ancient Kingdom needed to create the underground facilities were lost, while the little knowledge and technology that had remained were passed down secretly among a small number of people?

Because of the absence of threats from nature, this world had little to no need for natural science and that was how people gradually stopped learning about natural science. It resulted in this world that seemed to have the same technological advancement and knowledge as the medieval period in my previous life… Was that what had actually happened in this world?

This world had things that could only be created using natural science knowledge, but the people of this era couldn’t recreate them. Basically, the people of this era had a fracture of technologies used by the Ancient Kingdom but had lost the method of creating those technologies.

The history of this world started from the Ancient Kingdom era, then the previous demon king resurrection era, the era of chaos after the previous demon king was defeated, the war period before the kingdoms were formed, and lastly the ‘medieval period’ era that I was currently in. If it was true that only a portion of the technology from the Ancient Kingdom era had remained now, then…

…Wait a minute. In the first place, what exactly was the demon king?

If my assumption that demons were a substitute for natural disasters in this world was correct, then what exactly was a demon king? If scientific knowledge like astronomy and mathematics existed along with the knowledge of magic in the era of the Ancient Kingdom, was it a coincidence that only scientific knowledge was lost after the demon king destroyed the Ancient Kingdom?

Also, did the technology that was capable of creating the ‘high-ranking equipment’ disappeared along with the scientific knowledge?

What exactly was the demon king? And why did his appearance in the Ancient Kingdom era cause the disappearance of the scientific knowledge and the technology capable of creating high-quality equipment? Was it just a coincidence? Also, was the current demon king the same kind of existence as the previous demon king?

The appearance of the demon king of this era was called ‘the resurrection of the demon king’ because that was what the oracle that Laura received said, but to what extent could we believe Laura’s oracle to be true? Was the demon king of this era truly the previous demon king who had been resurrected? Or, did these demon kings only share their positions as ‘demon kings’, but were completely different existences?

Then, how come despite both the Demon Generals and The Four Heavenly Kings being executives of the demon army, the generals got revived in the game but the Four Heavenly Kings didn’t? Also, maybe knowing whether the demon king was a ‘position’ or a specific person could shed some light on my questions?

“Welner-sama, are you there? I apologize for bothering you, but there is something that I need to discuss with you.”

I came to my senses when I heard a voice from outside. I almost got lost too far in my own thoughts. That was dangerous. In any case, the information I had now was lacking, so I could only create hypotheses for now. Trying to solve the questions I had with only hypotheses might make me stuck in confusion, so I should stop here for now. Though, I got the feeling that I had touched on some incredibly important facts about this world.

For now, handling Gezarius was more important, but I would search for more information later. I didn’t know where I could gain information about the Ancient Kingdom and the demon king, though.

With many unanswered questions in my mind, I decided to leave the archive.

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