Chapter 49
“Communication….”
“…magic?”
As if they had rehearsed it beforehand, Miriam and Kariya muttered at the same time.
Immediately afterward, however, they glared at each other and scrunched up their faces in deep frowns.
I chuckled and continued.
“First of all, it’s highly likely that Papino Jakma really can control plants with magic.”
“That much is obvious. He plants them inside people and even controls corpses….”
“But he is also a magic knight. And magic knights are human beings, after all. Bringing an entire forest within the range of one person’s magic and controlling it is practically impossible.”
“That’s true, but isn’t it also true that there’s no other way to explain it?”
Charlotte asked. I readily acknowledged her point.
“Right. So let’s think about it a little differently.”
“Differently…?”
“He isn’t controlling the entire forest… it merely looks as though he is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Miriam replied, sounding deflated.
“So what, then? He crouches inside and waits around, and whenever someone approaches the forest, he rushes over and controls only the plants at that particular location to do something?”
“Exactly.”
“…Huh?”
Miriam blinked.
“Let’s think about it this way. Suppose we actually verify whether Jakma is controlling the entire forest. To conclusively prove that he controls the entire forest… how would we do it?”
“Hmm….”
Miriam thought hard with her arms folded. The other students began considering it as well, and Roxanna was the first to raise her hand.
“M-me…!”
“Yes, Miss Roxanna?”
“First, we should use communication magic so that we can relay updates on our situations to each other in real time.”
“Then we split into two teams, head for opposite ends of the forest as far apart as possible, and see whether the murderous plants attack both teams simultaneously…?”
“Hey, are you stupid?”
Miriam, who had been listening to Roxanna, pursed her lips and offered her unsolicited advice.
“Do you know how large Black Earthworm Forest is? To do that, we’d need a dozen or more magic knights using wide-area communication magic, and even then it might or might not be possible.”
“Just as Miriam said.”
I nodded along with her. Then, when Roxanna immediately grew dejected, I added one more thing.
“But Roxanna is right, too.”
“Whaaat?!”
Miriam blinked repeatedly. I grinned and continued.
“The answer I came up with is exactly the same as Miss Roxanna’s. And what Miss Miriam said was also what I was about to say… but she beat me to it.”
“I-I don’t quite understand.”
Roxanna tilted her head.
“To explain it more simply, Miss Roxanna’s answer is correct. But Miss Miriam’s statement is correct as well. In other words, that ‘correct answer’ is nothing more than an armchair theory that is all but impossible to put into practice.”
“In other words, are you saying there was no correct answer to begin with…?”
“Well, strictly speaking, it’s a little different… but you may understand it that way for now.”
This was precisely the blind spot.
Unlike the modern world, where a single phone call would suffice no matter how far apart people were, this world’s communications technology had not advanced that far yet.
Moreover, communicating by magic from one end of a forest as vast as Black Earthworm Forest to the other was no easy task.
Of course, the problem wasn’t a technical one so much as the fact that the mana reserves simply wouldn’t hold out. It was possible if you gathered a huge number of magic knights, but it was inefficient.
Unless one needed to check both sides’ situations simultaneously, as in this case… letters or carrier pigeons were far cheaper.
“Ah, wait!”
Miriam suddenly shouted.
“But that guy… what was his name again? The one we’re trying to catch.”
“Papino Jakma.”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, Teacher Haru said earlier that he controls the forest with communication magic. How could communication magic covering that entire enormous forest be possible?”
The other students tilted their heads at Miriam’s question as well.
“Yes. Generally speaking… one person’s mana would be insufficient to cast communication magic over that enormous forest.”
I nodded.
“But that applies only to voice communication magic, which transmits voices between people….”
“That…?”
“Have any of you ever heard of ‘Bluebird Magic’?”
I said as I drew out a thread of mana from my fingertips.
“What’s that?”
“You think I’d know just because I’m a transfer student?”
The children merely shifted their eyes around, clearly unfamiliar with it. I smiled lightly and used the thread I had drawn out to create a bluebird.
“It’s a dual-attribute magic that combines familiar magic and communication magic. It’s fairly difficult to learn, but once you’ve mastered it, there’s no magic quite as convenient.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s simple. It lets you share your vision with this bluebird.”
This was also why I had been able to track Kate’s whereabouts and find her so quickly during the Kate incident.
With a little more application, it could also leave a trace of mana, as I had done with Kate, and make the bluebird track it autonomously or keep track of its location at all times… but that was far too difficult a magic for students, so I would skip over it.
“It does have its limits… but its true value is that it consumes far less mana than voice communication magic while being much more convenient.”
I waved my hand, dispelling the bluebird, and finished speaking. Charlotte then asked,
“Then are you saying that this man named Jakma is using Bluebird Magic?”
“No?”
But I immediately shook my head.
“It only consumes less mana when compared to voice communication magic. Bluebird Magic itself still consumes a considerable amount of mana. A magic that instantly creates an autonomous familiar couldn’t possibly be simple.”
I said it with an intentionally playful expression.
“What?! Then doesn’t that mean there’s no answer after all?”
“…No.”
Kariya cut off Miriam’s complaint and shook their head.
“May I ask exactly three questions, Instructor?”
“Just ‘Instructor,’ please.”
“…Instructor. Is it correct to understand that Bluebird Magic is a spell for creating a familiar to control?”
“That’s right.”
“Then would it be safe to assume that subjugating a living creature and making it into a familiar consumes even less mana than creating one?”
“Generally speaking, yes. But if the familiar resists fiercely… for example, turning a powerful creature like a griffin into a familiar requires more mana than creating an artificial familiar.”
“…Last question. Is it possible to make a tree into a familiar?”
“Yes.”
I smiled knowingly and nodded.
“Aaaaaah!!”
Only then did Miriam clap her hands as though she finally understood.
“So he made the trees in Black Earthworm Forest into familiars!”
“More precisely, only some of the trees along the perimeter of Black Earthworm Forest.”
“Not the entire forest?”
“That would be too much.”
In response to Charlotte’s question, I shrugged.
“Trees offer virtually no resistance, so they’re easy to subjugate magically. Their abilities as familiars are correspondingly weak, though. To put it extremely, it would be better to make an ant crawling along the ground into a familiar.”
“But the mana consumption would be just as low, right?”
“That’s right. But as I said, Jakma isn’t controlling the entire forest. He’s merely making it look that way. It would be impossible to make every tree in Black Earthworm Forest into a familiar, but if he selectively made the large trees along the forest’s boundary into familiars… he could easily cover a range spanning hundreds or even thousands of meters.”
“But didn’t you say controlling trees takes very little mana?”
“A few dozen or even a few hundred trees would be possible with the average mana pool of a single magic knight. But if you counted every tree and plant in Black Earthworm Forest, there could be thousands… or even more than ten thousand individual plants. That would be impossible.”
I pointed to the enormous tree in the middle of the village and continued.
“A tree this size can detect things dozens of meters away, and perhaps even as far as several hundred meters. Its detection ability is extremely poor, since it’s only a tree… but detecting that someone is approaching is enough. He can simply launch indiscriminate attacks at every detected response.”
“So… to summarize.”
Charlotte opened her mouth.
“The secret of the cursed forest is that he has subjugated the trees as familiars through familiar magic, then constantly guards the entire area through communication magic that lets him share the familiars’ detection abilities. Whenever someone approaches, he quickly moves there and directly controls only the plants nearby to attack them. By repeating this, he made it look as though the entire forest had been cursed and was attacking people?”
“That’s right. Thank you for summarizing it.”
“But, Instructor….”
Kariya asked then.
“If that’s true, there’s one point I don’t understand. As Charlotte said, Black Earthworm Forest is no ordinary forest in terms of size. It’s a wooded area larger than the mountain where I lived with my family as a child.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it really possible to keep moving back and forth across such a vast forest and attack every person who approaches without missing a single one? Even if it were only for a day or two, perhaps, but can he really keep doing this for more than an entire week?”
I nodded and answered.
“That’s a good point. Generally speaking, crossing from one end of that vast forest to the other several times a day would be impossible. Honestly, it would be difficult even for me, and it wouldn’t be possible even if Dean Ludwig or His Majesty himself came.”
“…If you’re saying that, Teacher, then there must be a secret there too, right?”
“My, Miriam, you’re clever.”
I patted Miriam on the head as she spoke with narrowed eyes, then immediately continued.
“I’ll give you a hint. Why did Jakma attack the villages near Black Earthworm Forest?”
“He attacked the villages…?”
“Indeed. To make it look as though he controlled the entire forest, conserving as much stamina as possible would be advantageous. Why would he go out of his way to expend his strength?”
“Just to threaten them?”
Miriam tilted her head as she spoke. Having heard her, Charlotte clapped her hands and answered.
“That’s exactly it! To threaten them!”
“Huh?”
Charlotte spoke to Miriam, who was still tilting her head in confusion.
“Think about it. If he attacked the surrounding villages and instilled fear in people… wouldn’t the rumors spread more quickly? That the forest was cursed and no one should approach it.”
“If the rumors spread….”
“People would naturally stop coming.”
“So if he only had to struggle for the first few days, people would eventually be too afraid to approach on their own…?”
As Miriam and Charlotte exchanged words, they turned sharply toward me in unison.
I paused for a moment, then nodded.
“…Yes, that’s the correct answer.”
“Hooray!!”
“Wow… Ahem.”
Miriam jumped up and down happily. Charlotte beamed as though she were about to clasp hands with her, only to stiffen her expression and cough awkwardly.
“Bookworm.”
“P-please don’t mind that.”
I glanced at the pouting Miriam and spoke to the children again.
“With this, I’ve told you everything I can.”
“There’s nothing else?”
“Don’t get too greedy, Miriam.”
I lightly wagged my finger from side to side and added in a low voice,
“From this point on, how exactly you deal with him… is entirely up to you.”