Struggling Hard As The Lord Of A Castle In A Different World Chapter 2

Rarity

The word "home" is misleading. 

Our home is not really a home, it's a castle.

Moreover, the building alone is super huge. 

But it's super worn down.

There's a hole here, there's a leakage there, the walls also look like they will crumble if you kick them. And even though they won't come up here, there are wild animals roaming on the lower floors.

It's Viva la wildlife zoo here.  

If I were to put it nicely, it's a castle with an ancient vibe, but in reality, it's just a worn down castle.  

To give you a little explanation on my background, I used to be a student in Japan. 

However, while I was playing a game on my smartphone one day, I was suddenly sucked into it.

I don't think you know what I'm talking about, but actually, I'm the one who's the most lost. 

I landed in this castle after I was sucked into my phone, then a palm-sized dragon came out of nowhere like in a fantasy novel and proclaimed itself as god.

"I'm the one who called you into this world, and you'll be the king of this castle from today on. Work hard to expand your kingdom and do things like make lots of friends and defeat lots of monsters. Oh and there are many other kings out there. They're going to attack you so beat them before they beat you. There will be rewards if you beat the other kings so do your best"

"That's all, nice to meet you". After it said all of that to me, it flew away.

I swear I'm not crazy. I definitely took in some radio waves when I was sucked into my phone but I'm completely normal and the phone that sucked me in is in my hands right now. 

The phone's calling and texting functions could no longer be used anymore but it now has functions that let me accept quests from the guild and it can act as an information device and such without ever running out of batteries. 

About three months have passed since I came to this world, but I haven't found a way to return to my original one.

「Welcome home, my king–!」

The one who came in a rush while wagging his prideful tail was one of the four kobold brothers, Simon of the spear.

Kobolds are a type of therianthrope. Simon's appearance is a complete dog and human hybrid, a young man with light brown colored fur that reminded me of a shiba inu.

He's a member of my chariot to some extent, but due to his fighting power being way too low, he does not participate in fights. Instead, he's mainly in charge of repairing the castle and chores like cooking and housework.

By the way, he's called the "Simon of the Spear" because he had a spear in his hand when he was summoned. There are three other Simons, one with an axe, one with a bow, and one with a sword.

The smile on this young man's face was beaming as he brought in the laundry; he looked like he came out of a toothpaste or detergent commercial from my old world. Well…he's a dog though.

「Where are the other Simons?」

「They're all out fishing and gathering wild vegetables for dinner! 」

Yup, he's loud.

「I see」

I hand Simon 1500 Vestas out of the reward of 3780 Vestas that I received.

「This is…?」

「It's the share for the four of you」

「My king, I'm happy for your feelings but we are your private soldiers. Even without money like this we will still give everything we have for you…」

「Ahh it's fine, don't worry about it」

I cut him off because it looked like he was going to start a long speech.

Then, I walked past the stone paved entrance where two rabbits were looking at us from, and headed to my room that's located on the third floor.

Normally a king's bedroom would be at the highest floor, but it's leaking up there and it's hard to climb that many stairs with no elevators.

I heard that some countries out there did develop elevators, but it looks like it'll take many years before that technology will be brought here.

My room is small; it only has a chair and a desk, some small wooden drawers, a bed, and a window. The setting sun was just directly shining into this room since the window didn't even have any glass panes. 

Before I got to sit down on my bed, Orion dove right into it and started rolling herself up with the blanket like a swiss roll.

「What are you doing?」

「Nothing」

She's been like this after we ran into Inui. Just so you know, Orion has her own room, but we mostly sleep together in this room so she doesn't really use it too much.

「Could it be because Inui called you an R-ranked girl?」

「Who cares」

Orion said in a grumpy tone as she hid her face in the blanket.

「Don't worry about the rarity rankings. The god said it too, right? Your rarity ranking is just a rough indicator of your strength at the time. Even someone with a low rarity ranking can become as strong as an S-ranked」

「Not as strong as a SSR-ranked though」

「Well, SSR-ranked individuals seem to possess special abilities. It's not very likely for someone to just randomly acquire one…」

When I said that, she threw a firm pillow right at my face.

「Oww, what was that for?」

「Do you know how it feels when someone tells you that you're ranked second-to-last in the rankings?」

「Hey, I won't forgive you if you start badmouthing the Simons who have the lowest rank of "N", okay?」

「Those guys lose fights to slimes normally! And I'm only one rank above people like them!」

Orion went hmph and stopped talking.

I sighed hopelessly and sat next to her on the bed.

「You know, I was summoned into this world without knowing what the heck is going on and deep down, I actually feel really uneasy. Then that suspicious god said that I needed fighting power and told me to use the summoning stones to summon a champion. I was so happy when you came out. While I was all alone by myself, you came and told me that you're on my side. I was really really happy」

「……」

「You might not be happy being summoned like some kind of hero by a person like me but it's thanks to you that I'm able to survive in this world. That's why I don't really care about the power rankings that the god put on you guys, so don't sulk…」

「*Nnnghh*….*Breathes*….」

「Hey…… Did you fall asleep?」

Even though I rarely say those nice things…

With a big sigh, I got up from the bed.

I have to go wash up, then do maintenance on our equipment, and look for a dungeon that we can go to or find some other ways to make money.

The amount that I got today won't cut it at all.

When I was walking out of the room, Orion unexpectedly poked her head out of the blanket.

「I heard you…stupid」

I rinsed my entire body with water, and then headed for the armory on the first floor as I wiped my head with a towel that sucked at absorbing water.

Even though it still has the grand-sounding name of an "armory", it's more fitting to say that it was only a real armory in the past.

The swords and spears that we have are just a pile of clubs, iron swords with rattling blades, and some spear-looking things that were made out of wood. This so-called armory was way too lame.

I took a sharpening stone and started tending to the chipped swords.  

I could only provide the same level of care as kitchen knives. Even though I don't want to tell anyone to use these, I have no choice since our funds are low.

After I finished the brief maintenance, I turned on my phone inside of the armory and opened the game app that I was originally playing when I got sucked in.

In the app there are "Quests From The Guild", "Territory map of the kings", "Recently Discovered Dangerous Monsters", "This Month's Events", "Your Points", and other game-like headings lined up. They are all information about this world that's updated in real-time, but I have no idea how such an insanely convenient thing exists.

In the "Quests From The Guild" section, there are quests with detailed information listed in there that would tell you to go to this dungeon and kill this monster or bring back some item back for a reward.

I started to look for quests in areas that seem most promising for me and mainly Orion.

However, there wasn't really anything that looked good today.

「Collecting mushrooms for 800 Vesta a day. Silver fox subjugation recommended for 2 S-ranked champions…no way. Bring back a mummy's treasure from a historical site…that has too much risk and too little reward. Golem subjugation recommended for 3+ R-ranked champions. 3, huh…Maybe Orion can somehow…Nah, let's not do that」

It'll be a problem if Orion gets injured. We don't have a healer in our ranks right now after all.

I sighed as I looked at my phone.

This has become part of my daily life but will I ever find a way back home like this?

I reflected on how I became so peevish as I wondered if Orion was still pouting.

「Your power is in the R-class…huh」

According to the whacky god that summoned me here, we, the lords of the castles, are called kings, and our soldiers are called our "chariot". To make our chariot stronger, we have to increase the numbers of champions in our chariot.

Champions can be recruited from towns or dungeons but summoning magic seems to be the quickest way to bring in strong champions.

The summoning magic selects individuals who are above a certain level of strength and only the champions who would like to form a contract with the king will be successfully summoned. 

Oh, and you need this thing called the summoning stone if you want to perform the summoning. This summoning stone seems to grant the person being summoned one wish no matter what they wish for. For granting them that one wish, they are then contracted under the king. 

Well, I don't know how long it takes for their wish to come true, but when Orion formed her contract with me, it seems that she wished for a full stomach. She seemed to be dying from hunger at that time.

I thought it was a ridiculous wish, but starving to death in this world was nothing out of the ordinary. It's not something that I can laugh at and dying of starvation is probably much more painful than getting beheaded.  

By the way, the four Simon brothers were also champions that were summoned from the summoning magic.

While the champions do come with a certain level of strength, it seems that the summoning magic is also quite unstable. More often than not, weaker champions will come out instead of strong ones.

It's because of how similar the whole thing is to a "gacha" that I refer to the summoning magic as "gacha".

The Simon brothers' rarity ranking was the lowest one, "N"(Normal). Apparently, I fainted when I got the Simon brothers four times in a row. 

「It's pretty harsh to put the burden all on that girl, so I don't care who I get, I just want some new champions」

It would have been hard for us to go onto the streets and put up posters to hire mercenaries in the situation we're in, that's why I had to rely on the gacha.

We still have one summoning stone left in my storage but if I had drawn a Simon for the 5th time in a row, I would never be able to recover so I held out on using that last stone.

I was given five summoning stones at first and then I got my hands on a sixth one so I thought the stones were something common, but now I regret doing those consecutive summons.

Since summoning stones are obtained in high difficulty dungeons or through something like a special military agreement after defeating a king, I did not have any simple means of obtaining them.

「It'll be all over for me if Orion tells me that she wants to go home」

There are ways for a king to return their champions to where they came from. If they don't obey the king's order, or if the king judges that they might rebel, a king can return them at any time.

The champions cannot leave on their own, but if the champions say that they want to go home, it's not like the king has many options as their employer. 

You could make them obey by force but I don't feel like doing that.

When I looked at my phone's screen, I noticed a 「!」 mark next to where it says "Your Points".

「What's this?」

After selecting it, it said "Your Money Earned has surpassed 100 thousand. Here's a summoning stone as a present for your celebration". And my summoning stone count on the display went up from 1 to 2.

「Wow, lucky. Something like this is possible too? Oh yeah, this happened when I first earned 10,000 Vestas as well」

So the next time I get another one for free will be at 1 million? Isn't that a bit too far away?

「Since I want some more fighting power, should I give this godsend of a stone a try?」

With that decision, I put away all the weapons I was doing maintenance on and headed for the summoning area. 

In a room located under the castle that I call the gacha chamber, a huge summoning circle is always glowing there.

The room had nothing other than the summoning circle, which is just a faintly glowing magic circle.

I held my phone out on the circle. Then the screen asked me, "Do you want to perform a summon?" with a yes or no button as the options, so I selected yes.

When the phone's window displayed that my summoning stone went down from 2 to 1, the mysterious magic circle started rumbling as a mega size version of a gachapon machine from our world appeared.

There were lots of capsules in a transparent square shaped case, and there was a rotating type of knob in front with a prize mouth attached to the case.

Do I really have to do this every time? Can't the champions just come out normally? While I was having such thoughts, I held onto the knob of the gacha machine and started turning it as it made rattling noises.

For your information, a capsule will be spat out from the gacha machine and the rarity of the champion will be shown by the color of the capsule. Starting from the lowest, white is N, green is R, silver is HR, gold is SR, and rainbow is SSR, those five colors represent all of the five different rarity ranking.

The flashier the color is, the stronger the champion will be. 

I hope some kind of champion who can help Orion out comes out. If not, I hope a girl who can be my friend would be nice too.

I turned the knob while making a wish like that, then I looked at the capsule that fell into my hand.

「Wh…what the heck is this?」

I looked at the 7 colored capsule that was glittering in my hands.

「…Rainbow?」

Then I looked at it again.

「IT'S RAINBOWWW!!! WOAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!」

I was so shocked that I almost dropped the capsule.

Wait, I need to calm down. The god has said it before, this capsule state means that the contract is still being negotiated with the champion.

If the scheduled champion accepts the contract, the capsule will be openable, otherwise, the capsule will not open and the summoning stone will be returned to me.

Will it going to open…or will it not…? As a side note, Orion appeared on her own before the capsule was opened on my end.

I tried to slowly twist the capsule open.

「H-hard…it's jammed…」

I thought the summoning was refused, but the summoning stone wasn't returned to me and most of all, the gacha machine did not disappear. If the summoning was denied then the capsule and the gacha machine should both have disappeared.

「Does this mean that the champion on the other side was having problems making a decision about the contract?」

I left the capsule on the magic circle and sat down in a seiza position and waited.

About 10 minutes have already gone by. Isn't this taking a little too long? When that thought crossed my mind, rainbowed colored lights leaked out of the capsule. 

I covered my eyes from the bright light with my hand as I peeked at the glowing capsule through the gaps between my fingers.

There was dense smoke, and the faint shadow of a person.

Chapter end