Chapter 48
The Saint is a man surrounded by rumors in more ways than one.
Some say he is secretly the Saintess's biological father,
others say he is actually a dragon,
and still others say he is carrying out a task after being punished by the Lord of Heaven.
Still, there is one thing for certain.
“His estimated age is two hundred years!”
“What.”
He was already the Saint during the reign of the grandfather of the grandfather of the previous Emperor—in other words, during the reign of the Emperor four generations before the current one.
This, too, is estimated according to official historical records; if unofficial records are included, he easily exceeds three hundred years.
Of course, they say his species is human.
“Does that even make sense?”
A lifespan long enough to make one wonder whether he had come wearing some blood-fed stone mask.
Yet apparently, he walks around perfectly well beneath the sunlight.
He even goes to the capital's markets, crowded with commoners, every day.
“Magi Tower Master, do you happen to know anything?”
“It is a secret.”
Akion's curiosity exploded over the inhuman lifespan.
But even the Magi Tower Master, who seemed likely to know something, zipped her lips shut.
“Still, just a little─.”
“You know what idle curiosity does…? If you knew, you would be hurt, so I am keeping quiet.”
If knowing would get him hurt, there was nothing he could do.
Akion could only suppress his boundless curiosity. Wasn't he still too young to die?
Adding his previous life, he was barreling toward middle age at forty, but still.
“Let's just make the equipment.”
In that case, he might as well get to work.
He decided to focus on the Saintess's commission.
*
The Emperor's clothing industry had to wait for Count Gosiphium to send the cotton,
while construction of the public sauna for VIPs was proceeding smoothly under Count Delford's management.
- Thump.
“Here are the bones you requested.”
That was why Akion intended to send the Saintess back to the capital as soon as possible.
She was a Saintess who endangered both his mind and body in so many ways. Anyway.
“……Saintess. This is terribly rude of me, but may I ask you a few questions?”
“Hmm, since you're Saint Akion, you won't spread rumors to anyone else… Yes. Ask whatever you like.”
Over the course of his research and development, Akion had realized that his engineering was being ravaged—in a good way—by mysterious energies.
Mana and holy power!!
“It looks to me like this is some sort of vessel for containing something….”
“Yes, that's right!”
Of course, Akion had thrown a fit, shouting, “This isn't engineering!!”
But for the sake of drastically improving the incandescent bulb at the time… he had squeezed his eyes shut and followed the Magi Tower Master's advice on magical materials.
Thus, the filament material for Incandescent Bulb Mk. 2 was changed from bamboo to a tree grown by absorbing mana.
“Then the white powder inside this is….”
Thanks to that, it became easy to adjust the brightness according to the amount of mana infused, and its maximum luminosity had been improved enough for the Saintess to swing the flashlight around like a sword.
Then why not use only mana/holy-power-compatible materials?
So this time, Akion had planned to take a similar approach with the bulb for the Saint's custom Holy Light Sword (colloquially called a flashlight).
He had asked them to procure a carbon-based structure saturated with holy power─for example, animal bones.
“What… No, it isn't someone's ashes, is it?”
And a week later, the vessel in Akion's hands looked like an urn.
“Yes, correct! It's the urn of His Holiness Pope Johannes XII, the previous pope!”
“Ah.”
It didn't merely look like one; it really was an urn.
An urn containing the ashes of the previous pope.
Akion rubbed his brow once, one eye once, and his chin once, then asked again.
“Excuse me, but let me ask one more time. These aren't someone's ashes, are they?”
“As I said, they are the remains of His Holiness Pope Johannes XII!”
“Saintess, have you lost your mind?”
An unbidden curse escaped him when he realized he had heard correctly.
He even forgot that the person before him was the Punishment Saintess, who had recently been slaughtering dark mages and demon worshipers.
The Saintess, however, was cold toward evil but warm toward the people of the Empire.
She was a kind young lady who understood and respected why Akion was angry.
“Would you give me a chance to explain?”
“You said explain…?!”
“No, not an excuse—some hidden facts!”
By this point, Akion realized that the Saintess had brought this over half on autopilot.
Would merely wielding a Holy Light Sword cause him to fall somehow?
Akion rubbed his throbbing brow and listened attentively to the Saintess's time of excuses—or rather, explanations.
“His Holiness Johannes was actually the Saint's disciple.”
“I see.”
“And the remains of a pope or saintess contain an astonishing amount of holy power.”
Why the Saint was excluded, Akion could roughly guess, given that the current Saint was well over three hundred years old.
“That is why the remains of former popes and saintesses are managed separately by the Papal See. With His Holiness the current Pope's permission, some are used to make holy artifacts. Johannes's remains are a little different, though.”
“In what way?”
“He left a will asking people to use his remains freely.”
And to give everything up if it was for Saint Ray.
Apparently, Johannes XII had left such a will.
If she had brought it in accordance with his will… Akion could understand.
“That's why I brought all of it. His Holiness the Pope and the Saint gave their permission.”
“Are you sure it's all right to entrust something this precious to me…?”
But you're using this precious stuff just to make one lousy flashlight?
Akion, who was greedy for materials, wasn't sure this was right either.
“Just to make a mere flashlight….”
“Holy Light Sword.”
“Flashl─.”
- Kiiing!!
“Holy Light Sword.”
“Yes, sir. I've received the commission to make a Holy Light Sword….”
“Ahem. I knew I could trust you with it, Saint Akion.”
But Akion could not overcome the Saintess's madness, which had even activated her halo.
He began the work with tears in his eyes.
*
“So how are you going to make it?”
Having received the previous pope's remains as a carbon-based material, Akion said,
“We have to reprocess them first.”
“You mean you'll extract only the necessary components and use those.”
As he had already planned, this time Akion intended to focus more on magical and alchemical materials than on engineering.
“Heh heh! Isn't this our field?”
“Just leave it to us, Young Master!”
The family mages were well versed in that sort of thing, after all.
At last able to take the initiative in research, all the mages cried, “Science is the best!” and threw themselves into it enthusiastically.
“A material that can endure ultra-high temperatures without breaking….”
“Wouldn't a metal wire be best? It also fits the blackbody-radiation principle used in incandescent bulbs.”
“Is there any metal that can withstand temperatures hot enough to make iron flow like water?”
Of course, that didn't make it easy.
Once they began considering this and rejecting that, and so on, the family mages felt their heads were about to burst.
The mages in the conference room cautiously glanced at Akion, wondering if they could somehow get even a bit of advice,
“I'm an engineer, not a mage.”
“Right…….”
They despaired at having to break through this one using only their own abilities.
Come to think of it, hadn't Akion's science and engineering knowledge enabled them to overcome everything until now?
After enjoying more than a year of getting knowledge for free, they found researching on their own, tearing their hair out like before, painfully difficult.
“Gaaah! Are you telling me there isn't some dream material that's an alchemical substance, yet scientifically excellent in strength and hardness, and that won't break under high heat?!”
“Young Master, how about we teach you magic instead, and you do the research for us, pleeease…?”
“You know that's a fair point, right? A point that deserves to get you punched.”
Akion pitied the mages who were doing no research whatsoever.
In the end, he brought in one of the magic cheat codes.
“Gasp, Magi Tower Master!”
“Tsk, tsk. And you call yourselves Enersis mages….”
The Magi Tower Master of Lidashid, who had shared a thousand years with the Empire and attained an absurdly high rank as a mage.
Seeing the Enersis mages' research grind to a halt, she clicked her tongue and pulled something from her robes.
“You could simply use mithril.”
It was mithril ore, the stuff that made everyone from knights to mages go wild!!
“Magi Tower Master, if you don't mind, may I offer one opinion?”
“I shall permit it.”
“We did consider that material, but….”
Naturally, the Enersis mages had considered it too.
Excellent heat resistance and outstanding mana and holy-power conductivity.
Incredible tensile strength and ductility.
On top of that, it was an excellent material for working into alloys.
“It's too expensive.”
“Even if we're making a flashlight for the Saint… the unit cost doesn't work. The moment we put it in, we'd be guaranteed to take a loss!”
The problem was simply that it was filthy expensive—enough to make even wealthy Enersis hesitate.
No matter how much it was Akion's Workshop, the budget was limited.
That was why the mages had eliminated mithril from consideration early on.
To those sensible mages, the Magi Tower Master said one thing as if they were pathetic.
“Then persuade the workshop master.”
“Huh?”
Was spending the budget Akion's responsibility?
It was the responsibility of the people leading the project.
“Ah…!”
That was also why Akion had given the Enersis mages the reins for developing this custom flashlight.
Akion wanted a lab that would run itself even when he was absent.
Besides, he had handled most of the high-importance magical projects up until now,
so he decided that, since things had come to this, he would let the Enersis mages belonging to the workshop try one.
“Young Master Akion!”
Seeing those mages' shining eyes, even Akion's heart softened.
Back in his previous life, when he had been in a lab, there had been times when the budget suddenly got slashed and everything from research funds to his salary melted away.
Remembering that impoverished life… he wanted to approve it for these passionate mages.
Besides, wasn't it Enersis?
Surely Count Delford and the steward wouldn't object too much to buying mithril for research and product development.
“What are you looking at?”
“Pardon?”
“Rewrite the proposal and the budget, too. Did you think I'd just hand it over?”
“Huh?”
But he hadn't said he would give it to them for free.
“For the record, if you don't write them properly, I'll keep rejecting them. You all know what I'm like, right?”
“Gasp.”
“Gasp…!”
Thus began the endless rejection of research proposals.
* * *
And so the mages were ground down without end.
Rejected proposals and budget cuts?
Actually, he approved those in one go.
“Oh.”
The problem was the mixing ratio.
Absurdly expensive mithril,
and the ashes of the previous pope.
They had to use only tiny amounts of both and find the fantastically perfect mixing ratio.
“Guys, surely you haven't died…?”
According to Clad's letter, when making pure mithril, adding carbon as in steel production would be ideal,
but because the bone ash also contained phosphorus (P), the mages were all ground down figuring out the mixing ratio.
- Snore!
- Grrrrr, phewuuu~!
“Ah.”
Only when she heard the snoring did the Saintess who had come along realize that all the mages sprawled across the workshop had passed out.
“They've merely overworked themselves.”
“That's an ordinary day at our workshop.”
By medieval standards, overwork was treated as nothing special,
and Akion was very satisfied about that.
“Still, overworking too often isn't good for your health─.”
“That's why I make sure to take breaks from time to time─.”
Thus, Akion and the Saintess
carefully made their way inside so as not to wake the unconscious mages lying on the workshop floor,
- Sparkle!
“Oh.”
“Wow.”
A silver metal wire with a blackish hue had been stretched taut.
The incandescent bulbs hanging from the workshop ceiling reflected off it, giving it an iridescent sheen like the surface of a pearl.
Akion did not know the chemical structure and properties of mithril in detail, but instinctively thought of one name.
“Mithril Phosphocarbide?”
“Pardon?”
“No, no. I was just wondering what name would suit this new mithril alloy.”
But calling it that was long and pedantic, so a more concise version would be much better.
“Why not leave that to the people who made it?”
“Heh, that's true.”
But the right to name it belonged to the mages sprawled across the workshop floor.
Akion had offered advice here and there from the sidelines… but weren't they the ones who had ultimately completed it?
Akion and the Saintess carefully picked up the metal wire resting on the desk, wearing satisfied smiles.
“Excellent tensile strength….”
“Shall I infuse it with a little holy power?”
Apparently, the Saintess was itching to test it.
It probably wouldn't be good to shine too strong a light while everyone was asleep….
“A small amount should be fine, don't you think?”
“As expected, you and I are of one mind, Saint Akion. Hehe, just a liiiittle…!”
Doing it somewhere secluded so they wouldn't wake them should be fine.
The two moved to such a secluded spot and soon began the test.
- Crackle!
“Huh?”
“What?”
And then they uttered words that should absolutely never be spoken at a company.
But they had good reason to.
- Whoooosh!!
“Aaaaaaagh!!”
“Kyaaaaaaagh!!”
Despite absorbing only a minuscule amount of holy power, the new mithril alloy shone brilliantly.
In fact, “brilliantly” did not begin to describe it.
“My eeeeeeyes!!”
“I-I can't see what's in front of me. Aaaagh…!”
“Huh, huh?! What happened?”
“Huh? Young Master? And why is the Saintess here too…?”
It was simply absurdly bright.
Akion and the Saintess, who had been nearby, were temporarily blinded.
Akion had seen light like this exactly once before, head-on, and had been temporarily blinded.
It had been an enormous flashlight, a monstrous piece of equipment that illuminated an entire apartment complex by itself.
“Don't tell me… Young Master, you looked straight at it?!”
“One of our fellows nearly went blind doing that too!”
“I didn't know it would be this bright…!”
“Ugh, I can't see what's in front of me. Ugh…!”
It had been one hundred thousand lumens or something like that.
‘I went and covered everything with magical materials for nothing….’
Akion could not tell whether he ought to be happy or unhappy that the performance was utterly absurd—in a good way.
“That thing. Put it away for now.”
“Does that mean…?!”
“At that level, won't the Saint be satisfied too…?”
“Yeehaw!!!”
Today, too, he lamented his fate as the Dark QA.