Chapter 1
“Young master! Are you all right?!”
“Ugh, ngh….”
On his seventeenth birthday, Akion Enersis missed his footing and tumbled down the stairs.
And so, Akion, now sporting a huge bump on his head….
“Who are you?”
He realized he had reincarnated into a romantasy story.
*
An engineering slave who made the wrong choice after falling for his professor’s temptation.
While preparing a lab lecture with a body staggering from overtime, he was electrocuted to death by a faulty experimental device.
That was Akion’s previous life.
Anyone would call it a miserable ending, no doubt,
“This is life.”
A rich mine, fertile territory, and a commercial city. And on top of that, a count’s family descended from a great mage.
Looking at the history books here, the tropes of a romantasy story were everywhere, so he had no need to worry about an apocalypse ending either.
Reincarnated as the young master of a great-mage family in a romantasy story, with a cheat background?
And in a world where magic could do anything!
This was more than fair as an equivalent exchange.
- Crackle!
“No magic…?”
Except his magical talent approached zero.
Thanks to his bloodline, he had mana overflowing from him, but he couldn’t understand magic.
That was why, ever since he was five years old, Akion had been pointed at and called useless.
His purpose was to be sold off as the Northern Grand Duke’s live-in son-in-law on the day he came of age two years later.
“Mmm-hmm, all is well.”
But even that life was more comfortable than that of commoners.
It certainly qualified as “All is well.”
Akion’s positive mindset, equipped with a modern person’s sensibilities? No one could stop it.
*
“All is hell. Damn it.”
Actually, there was plenty around him that could stop it.
Because everyday life was more than a little uncomfortable.
Even if you dressed it up, the bathroom was still a pit latrine,
At night, they used candles or torches to light the darkness, so it was terribly dark,
Food preservation was difficult, so they used freshly butchered meat, then drowned the fishy taste from the blood under a mountain of spices.
On top of that, heating and cooling efficiency was atrocious, so winter and summer were both ordeals.
Worst of all, in summer, they covered their body odor with perfume, and that was just… something else.
“This uncivilized world needs saving….”
They had a grasp of hygiene—encouraging bathing and eating with forks—but that wasn’t enough.
Magic? It could supplement things, but… magic had hardly developed at all for everyday life.
The excuse was that they were too busy keeping other factions’ humans in check and fighting monsters… but the bigger reason was, “Does it make money?”
“This needs improving.”
But how?
Although Akion had no magic, his scientific and engineering knowledge from his previous life remained.
How incandescent bulbs produced light,
How water rose and drained in a Western-style toilet,
How a washing machine’s motor worked.
As luck would have it, the scientific laws he knew worked exactly the same way in this romantasy world. If so, implementation couldn’t possibly be difficult.
Therefore, first things first.
“I need to research at night, too.”
Let’s start with the incandescent bulb.
He needed to research all night, but what was he supposed to do if his room was dark?
*
There was a rumor going around Count Enersis’s household these days.
“I hear the youngest young master….”
“Is going to practice alchemy!”
Namely, Akion had opened an alchemy workshop.
What was alchemy? Mages called it the materialization of magic.
It could put magic into the hands of even ordinary commoners.
In other words, even talentless commoners could lay their hands on it if they knew the magical principles. Their hands, anyway.
“He should just stay quietly the way he’s lived until now. Tsk, tsk.”
“Please leave him be.”
That was why they were too busy pointing fingers at Akion.
If you’re useless, stay put.
Are you planning to bleed the count’s family dry?
Are you trying to play mage, of all things?
“Who cares?”
Akion ignored them all.
The slander of thugs who monopolized magic and neglected progress?
To Akion, they were fools who had chosen regression for the sake of power.
Fortunately, his biological father and the head of the family, Delford Enersis, was a merciful man.
When Akion brought up the alchemy workshop, he promised his full support.
Judging by his behavior so far, he seemed to be trying to stoke competition among the siblings… but that was none of Akion’s concern. He wasn’t interested in the count’s title.
Improving daily life was the urgent priority.
“Cough, cough!”
“Oh dear, young master! Are you all right?”
Inhaling the smoke from a charcoal kiln, he made the bamboo-carbonized filament for the incandescent bulb.
“Nngh….”
“Young master. In that case, relax the strength in your wrist and─.”
He struggled with metalworking under a blacksmith to make the metal wire that would hold the filament.
“So… are you telling me to separate a gas that is almost completely unreactive in alchemical reactions from the air? Young master. How could such a component even exist─.”
“It does. Nitrogen should do.”
He coaxed and cajoled the mage who, unfamiliar with inert gases, was suspicious of everything, and filled the inside of the incandescent bulb.
“Hoo, hoo….”
“Eek, young master! Your nose is bleeding…!”
“I’m fine.”
Even when his nose bled beneath a dim candle, he didn’t stop developing the incandescent bulb.
For a better daily life.
*
And so, one day, after three months had passed,
- Knock knock knock!
A dog-beastkin maid with drooping dog ears shaking knocked on the workshop door.
“Young master, young master!”
She was Goldie Heritage, the dog-beastkin who served Akion.
As the illegitimate daughter of Baron Heritage, a mage, she was a spirited woman who had left her family early, knowing she could never inherit the title.
The Count Enersis family recognized her talent and hired her as a personal attendant. In return, they agreed to teach her magic.
“It’s mealtime! Young master!”
That was her duty: attending to Akion.
Just keep him from dying until he came of age. That was all.
It was a simple assignment suited to Akion’s circumstances, and she had thought she’d have it easy, but….
- Bang bang bang!
“Young master!”
“I’m coming, I said.”
But far from having it easy, the young master had declared he was going to practice alchemy.
Once again, what was alchemy?
The materialization of magic, and magic that even commoners could access easily and quickly, she had been told.
“Ah! You’re covered in soot again! Why are you working yourself to death when you’re a magic idiot?! Do you want to die?”
“You’re certainly frank.”
Put another way, the slightest misstep could send him straight to the grave in a magical accident.
Was this young master fearless, or what?
“And you hurl vicious insults at the young master without hesitation.”
“Heehee, but you never scold Goldie!”
Paradoxically, it was the kindest concern Akion had received in his seventeen years.
Suddenly, he remembered that dog-beastkin often made loyal retainers who weren’t shy about blunt criticism. Maybe that was why Goldie was so frank.
“Yeah. More importantly, come in for a moment.”
“Ah, ah! Young master! I told you it’s time for lunch!”
That was why, before his father the count or his brothers and sisters,
he wanted to show it to this doggy friend first.
“Ta-da. Finished it in three months.”
“……Wow.”
The incandescent bulb he had just completed!
A transparent glass globe sparkling in the sunlight.
Numerous components joined together in neat, intricate arrangements inside.
All of it combined to look like a metaphysical work of art.
So this was the incandescent bulb Akion had talked about so much… Faced with a bulb far prettier than she had imagined, Goldie’s eyes sparkled as she approached.
“It looks like a jewel. May I hold it… just once?”
“You can hold the brass part at the bottom.”
Goldie handled it with extreme care, as if afraid the bulb might break.
“Wow… It’s beautiful. I didn’t know it when you said you were going to learn metalworking, but I never expected something this geometrically perfect to come out of it.”
“Pfft, what do you mean, a work of art?”
Watching her from the side, even Akion nearly let out a silly laugh.
If you got down to it, this was inferior even to a mass-produced incandescent bulb, the pinnacle of human engineering.
But if thousands of these came pouring out of factories, how astonished would these people of the romantasy world, Goldie included, be?
In any case, there was another reason he’d brought Goldie in.
“You see the bottom of the socket? Cast lightning magic in that direction. At a moderate output, continuously.”
“Oh, yes.”
The attendants of the Count Enersis family could use magic, and Goldie was also a mage whose specialty was lightning magic.
There could be no better talent for feeding this bulb a steady voltage and current.
- Vroooom…!
Goldie’s hair fluttered.
They said that when one used magic, waves were generated as mana was circulated. Apparently, those were making her hair flutter like that.
Akion, unable to use magic, had no idea what principle lay behind it. All he needed was for….
- Sparkle!
“Wow!”
For that incandescent bulb to shine brightly was enough. Just like now.
“O-oh, w-wow! W-wow!”
“Is it really that amazing?”
From nosebleeds to passing out from overwork.
These short three months had been the hardest-working period of his seventeen-year life. Not if his previous life was included, perhaps, but still.
“Wow…….”
“You saw that, right? This is engineering.”
Now he had to make a device to supply it with electricity.
Batteries, generators to charge the batteries, and so on… He still had a long way to go, but at least it was ready to show off to the people around him like this.
Once he finished that, too? Then all that remained was to light up the nights of this subtly uncivilized romantasy world!
“Young master… how on earth did you make this?”
“It’s all engineering, I told you. Based on the countless scientific laws established in this world─.”
“The mana I drew up to use lightning magic… the incandescent bulb is eating it!”
“Huh?”
Wait. Mana, not electricity?
The only thing that produced light by consuming mana was a mana lamp powered by inserting a mana stone.
But those had abysmal mana consumption efficiency.
They used only 10% of the mana contained in a mana stone, while the rest all evaporated and vanished. The height of inefficiency.
On top of that, mana stones had no other use, so they were dirt-cheap, and mana lamps were classified as luxury goods.
“It’s five times brighter than a mana lamp, but it uses so little mana! Wow, wow! Is this engineering?”
“No.”
Still, it’s not magic.
It’s engineering.
“Engineering is amazing! What principle does it operate on?”
Akion did his best to shake off Goldie’s bright, sparkling gaze.
How was he supposed to explain it when it had stopped being a field he knew?
“I knew it! It must be some secret of a great mage! I understand, young master! Goldie will keep her lips sealed!”
“You don’t have to.”
“Eek! Then shall we write a contract of oath?! Would that put you at ease, young master?!”
“I said you don’t have to….”
Akion broke into a nervous sweat calming Goldie throughout lunch.
“Then… just as you always say, young master, you want everyone to enjoy this precious artifact?”
“I told you, it’s not an artifact.”
Stroking Goldie’s head once she had calmed down… Akion pursed his lips.
When he tested it with the mana stone he’d bought for research a little earlier,
he confirmed that the incandescent bulb drank the mana from the mana stone and lit up brightly.
According to Goldie, who had excellent mana detection, its mana consumption efficiency was nearly nine times that of a mana lamp….
“I wish that were true, but let’s light up the mansion first.”
Akion recalled the thing he wanted to do most of all.
To completely illuminate the mansion at night, which had relied on torches, candles, and mana lamps.
He would drive the night from the Count Enersis estate.
“Let’s go get a budget from Father!”
“Yes!”
To do that, he would have to introduce this blazing item to the count, the sponsor and owner of the mansion.
Akion hugged the incandescent bulb to his chest and walked off with buoyant steps.