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After “descending” to the dining room.

“Master decided to rest in the captain’s room for a bit. And he told us to… choose our rooms.”

“Rooms?”

“Yeah. Individual rooms for each of us.”

Lucius used the word “individual” for emphasis.

“There are plenty of rooms, and he said it’s okay for each person to have their own.”

“Um… wouldn’t it be better to stay together…?”

“Yeah. It’s good for cleaning the rooms and also for waking each other up in the morning.”

“If we have individual rooms, there’s probably a locking mechanism, right? We shouldn’t be able to just open the door from the outside.”

“Probably. Just like when we were in Belselphia, I think? Let’s check it out.”

As Lucius left the dining room, the three of them quickly jumped up and followed behind him.

“Where’s the individual room?”

“Over there at the end.”

Beyond the dining room.

In the middle was a fairly spacious area, with elevators and emergency stairs, where quite a number of doors were present.

Doors spread out on either side.

The spaces between the doors facing each other across the corridor were relatively wide.

“This is…”

Creeeak.

As Lucius approached the door, it opened right away.

The dark room was instantly filled with light, and the layout of the room was visible at a glance.

“…It’s really nice?”

“It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s like a hotel in the royal capital. It’s too… neat and clean.”

“…It really is impressive.”

Unlike the outside, which seemed quite stiff, the inside was quite cozy.

“There’s a window… wait a minute. What happens if it breaks?”

“…I’m sure there’s something in place to prevent that.”

Beyond the room was a rather large glass window, and the clear sea visible through it was truly magnificent.

“…It’s really great, but is it really okay to use this alone…?”

Droniel scratched his cheeks and surveyed the room.

“……We’ll have to tidy it up ourselves, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. But the bed is nice and big, isn’t it?”

Rosmas threw himself onto the bed in one motion.

“Lucius, want to lie down? Let’s see how many people can fit on this bed.”

“No need for that. Just looking at it, three people can lie on it easily.”

“Isn’t it a bit too much for three people? Droniel, how about you and Rosmas share this room? If other rooms are similar to this one, Lucius, I’ll help you tidy up.”

“…….”

Lucius looked a bit lost as he quietly pointed outside.

“Since the Master asked us to choose our own rooms, let’s say this one is Rosmas’s room for now?”

“Wait a minute!”

“Why?”

“I just checked the bed! We need to look around at the other rooms too! Shouldn’t Lucius be the first to choose?”

Rosmas quickly got off the bed.

“Let’s take a look at the other rooms! After that, we can make a choice!”

Influenced by Rosmas’s enthusiasm, the group left the room and checked other rooms.

But.

“They’re all the same.”

All the rooms had the same basic layout.

“The basic structure of the rooms is the same; the difference will be in how we decorate them.”

“Um….”

Droniel scratched his head.

“It’s more spacious than I thought…”

“Is it because managing it might be inconvenient?”

“Uh? Oh, no! Why would I find that inconvenient?”

“You and housework… never mind.”

Lucius shook his head calmly and held back his comments.

“I’ll take this room for now.”

Lucius glanced upwards for a moment and chose the room in the middle of one of the rows.

“Then I will….”

“That’s fine for you, Lucius, but we need to decide the order!”

“…Okay.”

There were two rooms next to Lucius’s room.

And one person had to go across the corridor to enter their room, no matter how close they tried to get.

Whether it had a wall in between or two doors.

The eyes of the three women were now lit up.

“By the way, Lucius, why did you choose this room? Because it’s in the middle?”

“Um….”

Lucius entered the room he chose, lay down on the bed with a smirk.

“I just felt this was the right one.”

*

Here, all the rooms in the Bride Ship are individual rooms.

One person can use one room, and in some cases, two people can share a room.

The issue is that the layout of the rooms isn’t the typical linear corridor of an inn, but rather structured to face each other across a hallway.

Half of the floor connected to the dining area consists of guest rooms, and people exit their rooms to walk down the corridor to reach the dining room.

There are other facilities besides the dining area, but fundamentally, all the floors with rooms are entirely for lodging.

Even one floor alone is incredibly spacious.

With four such floors and even more facilities in the basement, it’s quite a lot.

“I can manage this entire vast ship by myself, but there’s no way five people can handle the cleaning.”

The Hero Party needs to focus on their growth.

Even if meals are a must for improving relationships with the heroes, they cannot do the so-called menial tasks like washing dishes and cleaning with the heroes.

Someone needs to organize things.

And as the captain, I have no intention of doing that myself.

“Celcius entrusted this vast ship to me hoping for a solution.”

If I didn’t have a way to manage this big ship, Celcius would surely have assigned someone as crew to take care of the ship’s duties.

However, that wasn’t the case because as long as I have mana, I can adequately manage this extensive facility, the Bride Ship.

“……Phew.”

I was a bit tense showing off in front of Lucius, but successfully summoning a Water Elemental using the powers of Beelzebub and Leviathan was a success.

“Now I can assign these guys to do the chores on board.”

The mana required to create a single Water Elemental isn’t exceedingly high.

It’s not small either, but thanks to Celcius’s blessings and the mana from the magic stones acquired in battle with Leviathan, my mana has increased significantly.

Purifying the sea?

That’s something Celcius could do with just a flick of his finger.

Of course, it’s true that I purified the sea using a significant amount of magic stones, but after that, I made all the remaining magic stones mine.

In other words.

Though I hadn’t told anyone, the amount of mana I was keeping in places other than my magical power pouch—the sub-mana tank—was considerable.

Knowing that massive amount of mana, Celcius willingly handed the Bride Ship over to me.

Because he knows I can handle it well enough.

“…Formation.”

I placed my hand on my abdomen, the sub-mana tank, and drew out mana.

I touched the hole in my abdomen, reaching my fingertip to the navel to extract the mana and form a small orb.

A perfect ball of mana.

This orb, which radiated red, blue, and purple, contained the powers of the three Demon Lords.

Beelzebub.

Leviathan.

Belphegor.

The most crucial power among these is undoubtedly Belphegor’s.

“…Creating an artificial spirit is no big deal.”

Although Lucius expressed it simply as a Water Elemental for understanding, what I created is a far more advanced being.

A spiritual body.

Utilizing Beelzebub’s attribute of mana aggregation to split a single mana like a cell into a shape.

Using Leviathan’s attribute of devouring to make everything it consumes an energy source it can move.

I mixed and mingled my abilities and intellect from Belphegor to create this spiritual life.

Had this been a being created through the synthesis of material, it would be called a “Homunculus.”

However, it was merely a spiritual body shaped solely from mana.

“The one made without a magic stone will eventually cease to exist… but like this.”

I took out a box prepared by Celcius, which contained some quality magic stones that had been tucked away in Belselphia’s warehouse.

“……Coalescence.”

I pushed a magic stone inside the round ball of mana.

The orb started to melt the magic stone as soon as it recognized it and began to absorb the mana within the magic stone as its own.

Wiggle, wiggle.

One becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and like that, they split and simultaneously reattach to form an unbreakable one.

“Formation. Transformation. Replication. …And Creation.”

With a splash, the Water Elemental took on the perfect shape of a woman.

“Hmm, perfect.”

Except for the facial part, I personally checked everything by hand.

It was clearly distinct from the makeshift one I created earlier; this one might actually be quite useful for Lucius, and even though it was entirely unnecessary, I deliberately made certain aspects human-shaped, and they all came out flawlessly.

“Ugh.”

Quite a bit of mana was spent.

It seemed to be similar to the amount of mana consumed when I swung the Sword of the Flames on the castle walls of Normans.

Creating a single summoned creature is this difficult.

It felt like all I did was sit still and move my hands, yet I had beads of sweat on my forehead.

Even though it was a Water Elemental made using a magic stone.

If I had created the Water Elemental solely with my mana, I might have had to drain all the mana stored in my sub-mana tank.

“…….”

I’m tired.

I can’t sleep, but I need a moment to rest because I’ve overused my brain.

Thud.

I collapsed onto the bed.

“Haa.”

The captain’s room is directly above the floor with the individual rooms.

If I make too much noise here, it will surely be heard downstairs.

“……I wonder if they’ve all decided by now.”

I decided to wait a little until my companions finished choosing their rooms.

“…Ugh.”

A strange chill was felt coming from below, but.

 

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