Chapter 48
Chapter 48
This is why hothouse flowers don't work.
Maybe they just didn't have the nerve to ask.
The locals here are so filthy I can't even guess what diseases they might be carrying, and their eyes are so hollow it's kind of scary, so you wouldn't want to talk to them.
But there's exactly one person here who doesn't care about that and actually goes out to find out.
I jerked my chin toward the center of the clearing.
The pink back of her head, busily hauling cauldrons.
"Ask the saint over there."
"Miss Lily?"
"Yeah. Among us, she's the only one who can actually talk to the villagers."
"......Understood."
Kars timidly nodded and then headed for the cart with a grave expression.
I wondered what he was doing, and saw Kars crack open a barrel, nod, and say to the others:
"All right, everyone, listen up! The barrels provided under the grain sacks contain dry provisions! From now on, move these over to the meal-prep side, empty them out, and then carry the barrels in teams of four to fetch water!"
He does have a brain after all.
A passive brainiac, maybe.
Normally he'd be a real pain in the ass, a troublesome smart-ass, but Wilhelm had straightened him out, so now he was useful.
I turned the remaining manpower over to Lucius and dusted off my hands.
"Looks like that's sorted. Gather up every idle kid and have Mr. Lucius put them to work. Have them dig and compact the ground."
"Understood, but..."
Lucius looked at me with worried eyes.
"Can you really handle the drainage ditch work alone? It looked like it ran through the whole village earlier, so the area is pretty wide."
His gaze rested on the battered shovel in my hand.
He must have thought I looked awfully pitiful, heading off to fight that godforsaken muck with nothing but a single shovel.
"If you do it alone, you'll wreck your body. Could I at least send a few people with you..."
"Mr. Lucius."
"Yes?"
I snorted and slung the shovel over my shoulder.
And then I dropped a line that overturned this world's common sense.
"How long do you expect me to keep shoveling by hand?"
"......?"
Lucius looked dumbfounded.
He looked like he was wondering what kind of zen riddle it was to carry a shovel without actually shoveling.
"What, are you going to save magic and boil soup with it? Let's go."
"......Ah."
Lucius's jaw dropped.
"Oh. The notebook, too. Let's bring that along. I need it right now."
Lucius handed over the notebook in a daze.
After taking it, I left the dazed man behind and strolled deeper into the village.
* * *
It wasn't quite a slope, but it was the highest point in the village.
I got there and climbed onto a tree that was half-dried and rotting away.
From there, I could see the village more or less at a glance.
That was when.
Creak—!
"Holy shit, that startled me."
The tree screamed.
'Come to think of it.'
With the ground like this, no wonder the tree couldn't hold out.
No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like a tree that had been standing there before the village was even built, and judging by its size, maybe this had once been the edge of a forest too.
"There's no way they would've paid money to buy and supply lumber."
Then that was a relief.
It meant the land's native vitality was strong enough to support part of a forest.
If I purified it properly and prevented any future rot, it would probably become pretty livable land.
'Let's get started.'
* * *
Lucius stared blankly at Cassian's retreating back.
'How long do you expect me to keep shoveling by hand? What, are you going to save magic and boil soup with it?'
Magic.
Yeah, magic is great.
But it's not all-powerful.
Doing civil engineering with magic? I'd never even heard of that.
'......Does that even make sense?'
The broader the area, the more precision is required.
And the higher the precision, the exponentially more mana is consumed.
And yet he was going to carve a drainage ditch through the entire village, all by himself?
'Mana isn't infinite, either......'
A veteran mage on the level of Professor Hicks, one of the Department of Magic's heavyweights, might be able to do it.
The size of a mana vessel.
That's not an area determined by talent alone.
It's a vessel that only grows once absolute physical time has been stacked layer upon layer.
No matter how much of a genius you are, you can't skip time.
A first-year student barely twenty years old—no matter how much of a genius Professor Iris recognized him to be—shouldn't be able to defy physical law.
And yet.
'......Why do I feel like he could do it?'
He didn't seem like the boastful type.
If anything, an unfounded certainty rose in me that he would naturally get it done.
'......I want to follow him and watch.'
The moment he shattered old common sense and mocked physical limits by performing a miracle.
He may be dismissed by mages and knights as a pragmatist who only cares about money, some grease-stained merchant.
But in the hearts of alchemists burns a flame of truth-seeking hotter than anyone else's.
Suddenly, I remembered something my teacher had once told me.
'A genius is like a corner of the world. Sharp and pointed, so it may poke others, but in the end it tears open the world's shell with that sharpness and expands it.'
Only now did I finally understand what that meant.
Because knowledge only becomes meaningful when I take it in with my own two eyes.
"Hoo."
Lucius let out a deep breath and swallowed his disappointment.
He wanted to follow, but his feet wouldn't move.
'Because I have work to do.'
An artificial well.
It was the mission Cassian had entrusted him with.
'Using these villagers like zoo monkeys for a show... Professor, you're a born general through and through.'
That anger was impressive.
Usually geniuses are detached from the world and numb to other people's suffering.
From a causal standpoint, they just analyze poverty and disease as phenomena and never let their hearts ache for them.
But Cassian was different.
He frowned at the stench, yet still tried to preserve the dignity of the people living in it.
'I've got to earn my keep.'
That rough little line never left Lucius's mind.
'The more I think about it, the less logical it seems.'
A genius brain, and a hot heart that feels other people's pain as his own.
If I hadn't seen it myself, I never would've believed it.
'Right. He set the stage for me, so I should do my part too.'
That way, if there's even the slightest chance he's a fraud, I'll be able to criticize him without hesitation.
Lucius set down his bag and rolled up his sleeves.
Then he turned back toward the male students standing around in a daze.
The preening young masters who still hadn't figured out what was going on and were flailing around, all flash and no substance.
"As you just heard, we're going to make an artificial well here from now on! While Cassian opens up the drainage ditch, we need to secure a place to store water!"
He tightened his grip on the hardening-agent flask in his hand.
"All right! Anyone willing to help, come dig now! We don't have time!"
Right after that.
Thud! Thud!
The clumsy sounds of the noble young masters shoveling began to ring out, breaking the silence of the slum.
.
.
.
And a little while later.
About an hour after the shoveling began.
Rumble.
"What is it?"
The people were flustered by the unfamiliar vibration.
Lucius, too, had first thought it was an illusion, but after seeing the people's reactions, realized it wasn't.
Then an even greater vibration hit.
Rumble-rumble-rumble!!
"W-what?"
"An earthquake!"
Startled by the stronger tremor, people began looking around.
Unlike the people scrambling in confusion.
'No way?'
Lucius thought of Cassian.
And the moment he turned his head toward the direction Cassian had disappeared.
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble!!!!
A tremendous vibration began to shake the entire ground.
And Lucius witnessed it clearly with his own eyes.
"Th-there!"
"My God......"
On the far side of the village, a giant tidal wave of mud, easily ten meters high, was rising.
* * *
Roughly an hour later.
My eyes were still darting around busily.
My eyeballs feel like they're gonna pop out, seriously.
My head was pounding too.
Imaginary lines were being drawn in my head, and a three-dimensional map was beginning to take shape.
I'd already run around on foot to check the texture and gradient of the soil, but even a stone bridge should be tapped before you cross it.
Especially with this kind of slapdash construction.
"Okay. Perfect."
I snapped the notebook shut, convinced.
This is on a completely different level from plowing a field.
A field's one thing—if you make a mistake and the furrows come out a little crooked, you just ruin the crops and can mutter, 'ah, fuck,' to yourself.
But here, if you mess up and disturb the foundation, houses collapse.
People get crushed.
The razor-thin boundary with the homes, the depth of the drainage ditch, and the angle at which the water would flow.
And even the scope of the leveling work needed before Lucius applied the hardening agent afterward.
I calculated every variable and hammered them into every last brain cell.
Only by recognizing the 'problem' this perfectly would my ability most reliably spit out the matching 'answer.'
"Ha... fuck."
A sigh slipped out on its own.
"If studying were like this, how nice would that be."
Like, just enough not to get expelled, but also not enough to make me try to seduce the professor lady.
Enough to solve problems more or less, but not enough to surprise the old professor geezers.
If it could be like that, academy life would've been a lot smoother.
No, then maybe I wouldn't have had a research lab.
'Cancel, cancel.'
Anyway, these kinds of specific condition settings were only possible in areas I understood and knew.
That's why, when solving magic theory problems, if I couldn't even understand the question itself, I couldn't set the specifics and had to just go with 'solve it for me,' anxiously waiting to see the result.
But in civil engineering or farming, the problem of poor drainage and poor crop growth had clear answers: open up waterways and level the land to restore the soil's fertility.
So the usefulness of this ability was 200%—no, 1000%.
Without this ability, I'd have died and come back and still never pulled off a corn double-crop.
I took one long, deep breath.
The preparations were complete.
Now it was time to show them.
"Let's begin."
I flipped the switch in my mind.
[Ability Activated: Solver]
[Remaining uses today: 2/3]
Humm—
Along with the machine-like hum ringing in my head, the world turned gray.
This time it wasn't my wrist.
It felt as though an invisible massive force were wrapping around my entire torso.
Tatak.
Without my will involved, my body hurled itself into the air.
A fall from the tree.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, shit.
Thud!
The moment my feet hit the ground, I knew it.
'Fuck, once this lets go, it's gonna hurt like hell.'
But whatever.
The formless force wrapping my body bent my knees and made my upper body dip forward.
Then it spread both hands wide and set them down on the damp, filthy earth.
Smack!
The moment my palms stuck to the ground.
The mysterious energy spewing from my fingertips began to send out roots.
Guuuuu—
A heavy vibration rose from beneath my feet.
...But isn't this a bit much?
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble—!
What the fuck is this! Why is it doing this!
Right away.
KWAAAAH-!
The top layer of earth flipped over, centered on my hands.
A tidal wave of mud started from the spot where I was kneeling.
No, a tidal wave of mud began spreading across the entire village.
'Uwaaaah?'
Fuck.
This isn't good.
The shockwave was several times bigger and stronger than when I'd flipped the ground back home.
Fuck, did that clicky bastard lose his mind from making me solve two shitty problems without a plan twice?!
And then, at that moment.
Something absurdly unbelievable happened.
The spot where the violently surging wall of earth—far taller than a person and nearly ten meters high—had subsided.
'Whoa.'
It had been carved with the precision of a paved road, as if it were a lie.
As if it had been cut and dug out by a machine. A paved road, complete with drainage ditches carved out in exquisite detail, had been finished.
In just a few seconds.
'...I'm screwed.'
Strange.
This ability.
When I was farming, there definitely wasn't anything this loud and ridiculously flashy.
No, fuck, it wasn't this insanely badass to begin with, was it?
Casually brushing aside those anxious thoughts of mine,
The tidal wave was forging straight through the entire village like a rhinoceros horn.