Chapter One: Yup, It’s Another World

I, Kanou Shinichi, was on the horns of a dilemma.

Warm, wet breath brushed against my cheek. I couldn’t help noticing how very white the fangs in those open jaws were...

What a dumb thing to be thinking at a time like this!

I’d heard that when people are in a really life-threatening situation, they sometimes forget where they are, as a sort of coping mechanism. Maybe that was what was happening to me. Why else would I be admiring trivial details, instead of trying to find a way to get out from under the fang-baring beast who had just jumped on top of me the moment we saw each other?

A moist tongue emerged from the dark cavern of its mouth and ran over its teeth. I guessed it was licking its lips at the sight of prey. It might as well have exclaimed, “Bon appétit!”

I was literally, like, five seconds away from dying.

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

This is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, bad!

If this were an anime, this would be the moment when the picture freezes and the words “really bad” are printed all over the screen until they lose all meaning. I could see how bad things were, but the shock and the suddenness of the situation left me trapped by my panic; “bad!” was the only thing that could break through into my conscious mind. Granted, there was another me that seemed to be looking down calmly on the whole thing, but even so...

In the silence of the dim room, all I could hear was the beast’s harsh breathing. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn, the only source of light being the few rays of the morning sun that slipped in around the edges of the drapes.

I was being held down on the floor of the room, and on top of me was a wild beast.

The beast was using its limbs to pin my arms and legs. The creature wasn’t actually that heavy, but it seemed to know how to hold a person down—it was pressing precisely on the muscles I most needed to be able to move. I tried to make my extremities work, but I couldn’t sit up or scramble away. Now I knew how a cornered animal felt.

Predators who use up energy unnecessarily just bring themselves closer to starvation, so when they hunt, they strike only the most vital points on their prey to prevent any resistance. The pinned, powerless bunny rabbit (i.e., me) can only lie there trembling and waiting for the inevitable.

To put it in chess terms, it was checkmate. I couldn’t move anything really useful, and that left me without a lot of options.

Was this how it was all going to end? Eaten in my own house by some unidentified creature, with no idea what had really happened to me or why?

No—wait, Kanou Shinichi! You aren’t a rabbit! You still have the most powerful weapon humans possess!

My mind started working desperately. Humans have intelligence. We have our wits! That’s what separates us from the animals! Now my brain labored to dispel the haze of panic. I needed a phat plan to break me out of this jam!

Arms? Legs? Pinned flat.

Fingers? Mobile, but there was nothing to grab.

Head? I could try a headbutt, but with my arms held down like this, I had serious doubts that I could reach my opponent.

Think... Think... Think...

What’s this? Human intelligence is exhausted?

Despair overtook me as I ruminated. I found that you can think of whatever you want, but if you don’t have the physical power to pull it off, it’s not going to do you any good. Look, I might have been sort of a big deal when it came to arguing on the internet, but punch me or stab me and, well, that was it.

No—wait again!

I can’t give up yet!

Words! Maybe I could talk my way out! That’s it, Kanou Shinichi! You still have the power to throw up a smokescreen of pointless chatter!

I placed all my hope in the very last weapon available to me.

O Spirit of Words, speak through me! Help me say something really awesome! Help me throw this creature off with my gift of the gab!

“Uh... Um...”

No response.

“Can I... talk to you for a minute?”

No response.

Whaaaa?!

Aw, this isn’t going to do any good! What am I even doing?! Chatter doesn’t help if the other person doesn’t understand what you’re saying! The beast on top of me stared at me with a glint in its eyes, obviously ready to dig in at any moment.

“A beast...?”

I’m not about to say that I’d calm down, but a quasi-rational thought did suddenly strike me.

As we’ve established, I was in a room, indoors. The curtains and windows were closed, making everything dark. But the morning sun that leaked in between the drapery was just enough to dimly illuminate the creature holding me down. It was deep in shadow, yes, but the darkness wasn’t total; I could make out a little bit.

On top of that, my eyes were slowly getting used to the dark. My attacker’s jaws were perilously close to my head, filling my vision. But if I could stay calm enough to pull my own head back, maybe I could at least get a sense of who I was dealing with here.

When I did, I let out a sound of dumbfoundment.

“............Huh?”

The creature’s face seemed to be covered in fur; that was why I had immediately thought “wild animal.” But on closer inspection, it was just really long hair falling down around its face.

Well, not quite. The hair was definitely more fur-like than normal.

“Hold on...”

My eyes had finally adjusted, and I could make out the contours of the face in front of me. I hadn’t imagined the gleaming eyes and the fangs; there was definitely a beastly quality to this person. But...

“Elvia?!”

Yep. The face was that of a girl I knew well. Elvia Harneiman, a werewolf. She had long ears covered in beast-y fur, and (better believe it) a big, fluffy tail.

I use the word “werewolf,” but she wasn’t really some kind of supernatural monster. She was just a girl, and a pretty cute one at that. Her big, round eyes and her slightly unkempt hair were the most distinctive things about her. She wasn’t very showy, but her plain looks had an attractiveness all their own.

I was very confused, first because someone had suddenly jumped on top of me and pinned me down, and (more importantly) second, because of the hungry-animal eyes with which that person had looked at me. Taken together, I had been left with no idea that this was my normally laid-back, easygoing housemate. Most of the time, Elvia was less of a wolf and more of a puppy.

Then again, and on careful reflection, this was Elvia’s room. Breakfast time had come around and Elvia hadn’t shown up, so I’d come to check on her. This being Elvia’s room, it was only natural that the inhabitant was Elvia, and therefore even more natural that it was Elvia who had jumped on top of me. Wait a second... Was that natural?

“Okay... uh... Elvia...-san?”

“Hooo... haaaah...”

The only answer was the continued slap of moist, warm breath against my face. I took a fresh look into her glowing eyes, and I couldn’t shake the sense that it wasn’t the gaze of a rational being. If this were a manga, her eyes would have spirals in them to suggest that she wasn’t in her right mind.

Chapter Two: Lunatic

Japan Self-Defense Force First Garrison, deep in the Holy Eldant Empire. The front-line base for the JSDF in this brave new world.

This was a haven for the members of the Japanese military who had been sent on this most secret of secret assignments. The elite of the elite gathered here, waiting for the mission that would determine the fate of their country!

.................................Yeeaaaah no.

I could act as serious as I liked, but the place really wasn’t much to look at. In the corner of a plaza in the corner of a training ground in a corner of the Eldant Empire, the JSDF had constructed a temporary barracks to sleep in. They may have named it the First Garrison, but there was no Second or Third Garrison, nor did they have any intention of building any.

It was to every appearance just a slapdash temporary residence. The size of the hyperspace portal didn’t permit any really big materials, so the scale of the building stayed modest. It afforded just enough space for one JSDF platoon—fewer than thirty people—to sleep in. Until a few months ago, it had been a collection of tents.

When I consider the vast gulf between where I was living and where they were living, the stark difference between Amutech, which was at least nominally a joint venture of the Japanese and Eldant governments, and the army, where the Japanese had to fend for themselves, became apparent.

“Hey, it’s Shinichi-sama.”

“Shinichi-sama!”

When we showed up at the training ground, the Japanese officers weren’t the first to notice us and come rushing over. Instead it was the training ground’s original residents—the kids who were getting ready to go into military service. They all seemed to be in their early teens; there were plenty of humans, but more than half of them were demi-humans, including even a handful of lizardmen.

For the record, they weren’t yet proper soldiers, but because they were treated as effectively members of the military, they were wearing magic rings. Hence we were all able to communicate with each other.

From the far side of the field, the JSDF soldiers looked up and waved. They were near a collection of shock-proof resin containers, all piled up. Those containers were why we had come to the First Garrison.

“Are those the trade goods from this Ja-pan of yours?” Elvia asked with interest.

Yep: those containers were transport crates filled with stuff from Japan. The containers themselves were military equipment, with unassuming exteriors, but they were sealed tight and completely impact-resistant. They could be rained on or handled a little roughly, and the cargo inside wouldn’t get a scratch. Great stuff.

Trade had yet to start in earnest, but the JSDF already made regular trips between Japan and the Eldant Empire, and they also handled transporting goods from Japan over to this side of the wormhole. The current shipment went beyond the usual provisions; it was what you could call an experiment in the commerce we were about to commence. It wasn’t yet completely clear what effect the hyperspace tunnel had on things that were transported over here, so these containers included some items for me and Minori-san as well as members of the garrison force.

When there were a bunch of PCs or manga or light novels or anime DVDs or games to deliver, the JSDF’s armored personnel carrier would pull up at our house. When it came to things that weren’t directly connected to Amutech’s business, though—like personal items for me or Minori-san, or food that was hard to get in the Eldant Empire—they came with these weekly deliveries. I was here to pick up a few items I’d requested.

With me, incidentally, were Minori-san, Elvia, and Brooke. The latter two were to help me carry boxes. Maybe it seems unfair to force a girl to cart cargo around, but Elvia actually volunteered, on the grounds that if she didn’t get plenty of physical exercise, there was a greater chance of her doing something crazy again.

Actually, I guess she could be trying to spy, too.

“This isn’t the stuff we want to sell,” I said. “More like personal items.”

As I said, goods for Amutech’s use would be delivered directly to us. In this case, we were just sort of piggybacking on a delivery that was mainly for the soldiers.

“Shinichi-sama, Shinichi-sama!”

“Hurry up, open it!”

The children at the training ground were insistent. Apparently, they had been waiting for me eagerly. I gathered that the JSDF troops had refused to open the containers until Minori-san and I got there, and the ever-curious kids had been on tenterhooks.

“I wonder if they’ll have rice crackers this time.”

“If they have seaweed, I’d trade them for some macha-macha berries.”

The kids sounded very excited. They saw the JSDF soldiers every day, so they weren’t intimidated by them. Every once in a while I saw a soldier hand out some sweets or a Japanese snack that they had imported. It reminded me of the way the American troops were supposed to have acted toward Japanese children after World War II.

“Come on, hurry!”

We worked our way over to the containers, the children urging us on. I bowed to the troopers posted on guard over the delivery, then made a beeline for the crate with Minori-san’s and my stuff in it. It was already unlocked, so all I had to do was open it and check that everything we had asked for was inside.

I pulled open the airtight lid with its rubber gasket and saw, inside, several cardboard boxes.

“Brooke, let’s take all these out of here and set them over there.”

“Yessir.” He came slowly forward, stuck his arms into the shipping container, and emerged with boxes of various sizes. The shipping container was pretty deep, so when we had to get boxes that were piled all the way back, Brooke with his tall height and long arms made quick work of the job.

We ended up with a collection of ten or twelve cardboard boxes, some big and some small. The system was, when I thought of something I needed, I would write it down and give it to Minori-san, who would handle the rest. It meant that I didn’t necessarily get things in the order I asked for them, so I didn’t know exactly what was in the boxes. There was only one way to find out.

Hence, I pulled the packing tape off one of the boxes and started to open it.

“Maybe you could help open the others, Elvia.”

“If you’re sure,” she said, and nodded.

This was her first experience with cardboard boxes and packing tape, and she looked very interested in getting her hands on them. She happily grabbed one of the boxes and—

Riiiiip!

“H-Hey, Elvia, what are you doing?!

“Huh...?”

She looked at me blankly. At her feet was a ruined cardboard box, its contents spilling all over the ground. I only needed her to remove the tape, but she had torn the top of the box clean off.

That’s some strength...

That was a beast person for you. Guy or girl, they were strong. Especially when it was “that phase”—or maybe she misjudged her own strength.

“D-Did I do something wrong?” She sounded a little nervous.

“No, I mean—well, it’s fine.” It was just a cardboard box, after all. Not such a big deal if she destroyed it. I could just consider it a warning to be careful what I asked Elvia to handle during that time of the moon. She looked like she could crush a plastic figurine in one hand.

“I don’t mind about the box,” I said, “but there’s some fragile stuff inside, so be careful, okay?”

“Very sorry about that,” Elvia said with an uncomfortable laugh. She started to gather up the stuff scattered on the ground—but then suddenly, she froze.

“Elvia?” I said, but I didn’t get a reaction. She had gone stiff, as if something had taken her by surprise. I followed her gaze to see—

“A ball?”

A box with pictures from some anime had come open, and a golden ball had rolled partway out. It was about the size of a soccer ball. In fact, the golden color had thrown me, but when I took a closer look, I saw the pentagon pattern—it was a soccer ball.

“Huh? This looks oddly familiar...”

“Oh, that’s mine!” Minori-san said happily, sticking her hand in the air. “Oooh! I’m so glad they were able to get it!”

“What is it?”

“It’s limited-edition merchandise from Prince of Soccer FINAL!” She scooped up the ball with a victorious look on her face.

Prince of Soccer was the soccer drama for a new generation, a story about a pretty-boy soccer player with near-supernatural abilities and techniques that bordered on magic. The franchise encompassed both a manga (perfect for fujoshi) and an anime, a classic example of multi-media marketing.

But hang on. Wasn’t FINAL supposed to be the third season of the anime? I recalled the show doing at least as well as I**zuma Eleven in the annals of outrageous soccer stories. It was immensely popular, spawning not just an animated adaptation but video games and a stage musical, too. Given that it was aimed squarely at fujoshi, it fell outside my personal interests, but I knew it by reputation: its fans were notoriously rabid.

“This is a replica of the ‘golden ball’ that the hero Masato gets at the end. Okay, so they just painted a regular soccer ball gold, but as pack-ins go it’s a pretty— Huh?”

She was halfway through her sentence when she noticed that the soccer ball had disappeared from her hands. Or, not disappeared, exactly. It had been stolen at an incredible speed. But who’d done it?

“Hey, what?!”

“Elvia?”

Minori-san and I both saw Elvia, roll-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-ling around the training field with gusto, as if she were a ball herself. She must have been the one who had jumped past and taken Minori-san’s ball, and now she was clutching it to her chest, but she had been overwhelmed by her own momentum.

Uh, anyway. Moving on.

“Yes... I think they can have children,” Myusel said hesitantly. Fair enough: she had been born into a world where humans, elves, and dwarves could all be classified as “humanoids.” Myusel herself was literally the living proof that humans and elves, at least, could procreate together.

“Huh. So a human and a beast person could...”

An image floated into my mind, of Elvia holding a baby with my face. I quickly shook my head. Uh-uh. No-fly zone. I’m not quite sure why, but that’s off-limits. A kid before I’m twenty? That’s too heavy.

Now that I stopped and thought about it, it was obvious: being in heat, from a biological perspective, was precisely the time when it was easiest to get pregnant. In other words, if I wasn’t careful and ended up doing it with Elvia while she was on her phase, I really could end up with a child.

Thank God we didn’t go all the way last time...! I let out a very, very long sigh.

“Shinichi-sama?”

“Oh, uh, nothing! Not one thing.”

I gave Myusel my best (slightly panicked) smile, and tried to convince myself that it really was nothing at all.

The ball was thrown back with almost as much force as it had been kicked forward. The flames were extinguished by their contact with the barrier, but the speed of the ball alone was enough to kill someone.

“I’ve got it!” a different elf shouted, flying forward. Again, I’m not speaking figuratively here. What was this guy, the South Dipper Human Cannon?! Without so much as a running start or even bending his knees, the elf flew through the air and headed the ball.

That sent it back toward the goal, but it went out of bounds at the last possible moment.

“Dang! So close!” all the elves exclaimed. For some reason, they all snapped their fingers as they spoke.

Okay, wait. Hang on. Where did these kids learn to play like this?! All this ridiculous Shaolin So***r-type supernatural stuff? I was very nearly going to ask the question aloud when it dawned on me.

Magic.

A close look revealed that the elves were all chanting as they ran around the field. Maybe not the person who was actually kicking the ball, but everyone around them—all their fellow players—were helping them, intoning spells that changed the direction of the wind or created a burst of flame or buffed the speed of the ball or the players’ own agility.

“They’re...”

“Yep,” Minori-san said from beside me. With a touch of frustration she added, “Maybe we should have seen this coming. All that Inazuma El**en, all those series with outrageous, impossible stuff in them—if you don’t know anything about soccer, why wouldn’t you think that was the way the game was played?”

“Even if you did—you couldn’t actually do it!”

Shout and pose all you wanted; you couldn’t do a Spirit B*** or a Kameha**ha, or use the devastating ancestral technique passed down by your forefathers, or activate some latent special ability.

Not, at least, in my world.

“Magic,” Minori-san said.

I could only nod.

Yes: magic existed in the Eldant Empire; indeed, everywhere in this other world, and the elves, flush with magical power, were especially good at it. They had taken those absurd cartoon soccer battles to heart and re-created them using magic.

In Japan, it’s pretty common to see books that take otherwise difficult or arcane subjects, fit them in a narrative framework, and present them in manga form for easier digestion: Japanese History through Comics, Learn Bookkeeping and Accounting the Manga Way. That sort of thing. The kids had just picked up their knowledge of the game from anime and manga more than from the rule books Minori-san and I had brought them. And they had been consuming the most outrageous series available.

That meant...

“Um... I’m gonna go check the other fields,” I said, and hurried to the next one over.

Our soccer fields were open-air; they didn’t have roofs over them. They did, however, have walls to keep our limited supply of balls from disappearing off the field. Hence, if you weren’t looking down from above, you wouldn’t know what was happening on the field unless you actively went inside and looked.

These walls, just like the ones I had seen going up around the stadium for the tournament, had been built by dwarven magic. Just as that suggested, I found the dwarf team practicing on the next field.

They say those of a feather fight together, but like the elves next door, the dwarves had assigned one person to be referee and divided the rest into two teams of five.

“Get in there!” A dwarf ran along, kicking the ball. He was pretty nimble despite his small stature. Dwarves and elves might both be faerie-type peoples, but dwarves clearly were on a different level of physical ability.

I was at least relieved to see that the ball wasn’t on fire or anything. It was nice, normal, kick-the-ball soccer.

“You think I would let you do that?!” A dwarf girl—it was Romilda—uttered a line that sounded like it belonged to some mecha anime, then slammed her hands against the earth.

No way, I thought.

“Eruou iruguna!!” Romilda howled.

With a wumph!, a wall burst out of the ground right in front of the dwarf who was dribbling the ball. As I’m sure you realize by now, I’m still not being metaphorical: this was an actual wall. The spell sounded somewhat familiar—it was probably a reduced version of what the dwarves had used to build the stadium.

“Nice try!” The kicker nimbly dodged the obstacle.

Romilda, however, shouted, “Hit it, everyone!”

“Yah!” In response, the dwarves on her team all put their hands on the ground.

Wait a second... Weren’t we supposed to be playing soccer? But there was no time for me to interject as—

“Eruou iruguna!”

“Eruou iruguna!!”

“Eruou irugunaaaa!!!”

Wham! Wham! Wham! Walls began popping up everywhere, surrounding the guy with the ball.

“I think I remember Fullm***l Alchemist having a fight scene like this,” I murmured in a daze. But now the dwarf with the ball was shouting.

“You’re not gonna get away with this! Ekansu gunigiddo!”

There was a huge bang, and the dwarf disappeared from within the walls.

No... Not disappeared. He fell, into a hole that had suddenly appeared beneath him. Heck, fell? He practically flew. Dwarven magic had always been about manipulating the earth, making walls out of it and stuff. It was only natural that they would have a network of tunnels and secret spaces under the ground, layer upon layer of them. The dwarf boy had used his magic to simply dig straight down to them.

“Where’d he go?!”

“And where’s he going to come back?!”

The dwarves formed a half-circle around the goal.

“Right here!”

“Noooo!”

The dwarf with the ball popped back up to the surface inside the goal.

“How did that happen?!”

“Wait, wait! The rule book says you can’t dig a tunnel into the actual scoring area,” Romilda insisted.

“It does not!” I found myself exclaiming.

There was a shocked silence as the dwarves finally and suddenly registered my presence. They stopped their game and came over to me.

“Sensei!”

“Sensei!”

“What do you think? How are we doing at soccer?” Romilda, her face shining, asked on behalf of the group.

“Well, uh, that’s a good question,” I said, scrambling for the right words. “What... game exactly were you playing?”

“What do you mean? We were playing soccer.”

Now I stood silently; what could I say? I mean, I guess that was soccer... of a sort. At least, it definitely wasn’t American football or baseball or dodgeball or anything. The field, the ball... everything met the official requirements for soccer. And yet...

“Magic?! You can’t use magic!”

“What?!” the dwarves asked, eyes wide. “W-We can’t?!”

“But it doesn’t say anywhere—”

“Of course it doesn’t!” I said, practically shouting. “It’s a sport, and—”

That was as far as I got when I remembered: the Holy Eldant Empire had no concept of sports. Or rather, they thought of such things very differently. On Earth, where there was no magic, we naturally thought of these games as contests of physical abilities. But in this world, maybe it only made sense that the contest should extend to magical ability as well.

Even in my own world, we used tools and high-functioning equipment that strictly went beyond the human body. Marathon runners have watches; in soccer and baseball, people use spiked shoes or footwear with special shock-absorbing gel. Even in swimming, which may seem like the purest test of human capability, participants can use swimsuits that reduce water resistance. It was up to the international sporting bodies in charge of these competitions to determine what was “unfair” and what wasn’t.

But there weren’t any international sporting bodies here. There was only me.

“Sensei?” Romilda and the others were looking at me, concerned. They were only trying to do their best, and here I came, shouting that they were getting it all wrong. They didn’t have any ill intent, and I’m sure they didn’t mean to disrespect soccer or anything. But still...

“Okay. Uh,” I mumbled, struggling with a vague sense of guilt. “Magic isn’t allowed in soccer. I’m real sorry. My world doesn’t even have magic. That’s why it’s not in the rule book.”

Romilda and her friends froze with a collective gasp. Then they all sat on the ground, looking dejected.

“That’s it...”

“It’s over...”

“This is the end...”

“Two weeks of work...”

You would think I had sentenced them to death. Watching them sit there and groan among themselves was almost as hard for me as it was for them. I felt like I was forcing something terrible on them.

“Hey, uh, but you can just play without magic, right?” I said in a hurry. “It looked like you really had dribbling down and stuff.”

I pointed to the dwarf who had been kicking the ball. As far as I had seen, the dwarves had used their magic to build walls and dig holes, but as for basic soccer technique, that was all them. So why not just play?

“But that...” Romilda said, a panicked look on her face, “that would make us like children playing against them.”

“Them?”

I let my gaze follow Romilda’s finger: she was pointing at the third soccer field...

The dwarf boys and girls wouldn’t say anything more, so I had no choice but to go over and have a look for myself.

“Ahhh hahahahahahahahaha!”

No sooner had I arrived on the third field than a burst of almost ecstatic laughter reached my ears. It was coming from—

“Elvia?!”

Yep. The adrenaline-high belly laugh was coming from my own personal beast girl.

The third field was currently occupied by the mixed team, for which anyone could apply. It wasn’t students on this team, but regular citizens of Marinos; there were eight humans and three beast people.

The beast people were standing smack in the middle of the soccer field, passing the ball to each other and looking like they were having the time of their lives. The humans, however, were standing on the sidelines, looking bored.

“Take that!”

“Got it!”

“Hi-yah!”

There was Elvia. There was a young guy with two-colored hair who looked like a weretiger. And then there was a large girl with round ears, probably a werebear.

Elvia and the beast people loved soccer balls so much that I figured I couldn’t keep them off the field if I wanted to, so I had asked Elvia to go into town and find some young-ish beast people to participate.

But what was going on now? I took a few steps onto the field and stared vacantly at the beast people’s game, just like the human players. Seriously, what was this?

The ball—

“Rrah!”

“There!”

“Try this on for size!”

—it never touched the ground. The beast people were essentially playing hacky sack with it, as if the whole point were to keep the ball in the air. And the way they were doing it—Elvia and her friends would jump up to kick the ball and then jump up to catch it, all using their feet, of course. They would twist and dodge in the air, kicking and blocking the ball again and again.

Bicycle kicks were all well and good, but this was soccer as air war. They might as well have a sign saying Hands off, humans! Er... or Feet off, I guess. Whatever. The point is, the ball was never less than three meters off the ground. Heck, a bicycle kick would practically be the starting point for a game like this.

I stood dumbfounded. I knew beast people had serious athletic abilities, but this was ridiculous. It was like something straight out of Shaolin So***r, but without the supernatural powers.

“So that’s what they meant.” I finally understood why the dwarves were so unhappy to hear that magic was off-limits. Against a team like this, you couldn’t even hope for a fair fight without magic. What was more, watching the expressions on the faces of Elvia and her friends, it was clear that they weren’t even being serious. They were just playing, knocking the ball around; it wasn’t a proper contest yet.

I shuddered to think what would happen if they decided to really play. No human would be able to so much as get a toe on the ball.

“They’re right...” This was something else.

As I stood thinking, Elvia noticed my arrival. “Oh, Shinichi-sama!” she said, breaking off her game and coming over to me. Her eyes were sparkling; she was palpably fulfilled. “I didn’t realize you were here!”

“Oh, uh, sure. Say, Elvia...”

“Man, but this is a great game, this soccer!”

I didn’t say anything. A question—did what they were doing count as soccer?—flitted through my mind, but Elvia looked so happy that I couldn’t bring myself to voice it.

Still, there was a real dilemma here. Without magic, the beast people would have an unbeatable advantage. But at the same time, I could hardly tell Elvia and the others to hold themselves back.

“Oh... I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” I said lamely. Elvia nodded enthusiastically, her tail wagging in time.

“I sure am!” she said. “A whole lot!” Behind her, the weretiger and the werebear were both giving me big grins. They looked so happy. So innocent. What was I supposed to say to them?

“That’s...” I started. “...Great,” I finally managed, nodding without much conviction. “Have fun, then.”

“We sure will!” Still grinning, they launched the ball back into the air.

I waved the dispirited humans over to me.

“You know what? You can use magic.”

Afterword

Hello! Light novelist Sakaki here, happily presenting Volume 3 of Outbreak Company.

I seem to have run out of pages for this afterword, so I’ll be brief (grin).

Brooke is the main character of this volume, believe it or not. I was really keen to do a lizardman story. The seed of the plot emerged in a planning meeting with a particular company, during which Furuhashi Toshiyuki-shi* wondered aloud what would happen if modern-style soccer were to be brought into a fantasy world.

Of course, Brooke would be lonely all by himself, so I’ve put Elvia to work throughout the volume, starting on the cover. Mostly just to show some skin, haha.

I hope all my readers will enjoy this book from cover to cover!

Ichiro Sakaki

23 March 2012

*Note: -shi (from the kanji meaning “master”) is an honorific often attached to the names of artists and craftspeople.