War Advances Technology

Burnell was in a state of excitement.

He had consumed so much coffee and stimulants that one might have thought his veins carried caffeine instead of blood.

After wandering around naked like a madman, he came to his senses enough to get dressed and stood before Ferda.

Erika was beside him as well.

“Didn't I once conduct research by dissecting a living monster?”

“That's right.”

“At the time, I discovered something. I identified the neural signals used in a monster's bodily regeneration.”

Those neural signals had been recorded on more than a hundred pages.

Ferda, naturally, did not even pretend to look at them.

“Explain it.”

“So, so… let’s think of it as being inside a monster's body, not contaminated water in a container!”

He struggled to explain it, gesturing wildly with his hands and feet.

“The monster is injured. Then we have to repair the injured area, right?”

“Yes.”

“To do that, we send a signal to the injured area and concentrate its regenerative power there, right?”

“Yes.”

“When that signal is sent, it moves the junk mana flowing in the blood toward the injured area. That stops the bleeding and regenerates it. We apply this to a water container. If we send an injury signal to a material that imitates flesh…”

Erika understood and summarized his words.

“So, according to what you’re saying, the junk mana will gather wherever the signal is sent?”

“Exactly!”

Burnell answered in a voice filled with joy.

Apparently, the fact that he had managed to make someone understand him brought him immense happiness.

“So you mean you can purify it that way?”

“Purify it? Ha-ha! If that were all, then this Burnell’s excitement would be nothing but third-rate! It isn’t mere purification!”

Burnell shouted again, his voice brimming with excitement.

“Regent! Haven’t I been telling you that we need magic stones? This is literally a technique for condensing and creating a mass of junk mana. We can extract an amount so vast that it cannot even be compared to simply taking materials from monsters!”

In other words, they would not merely purify contaminated water; they would obtain materials to make magic stones as well.

They had killed two birds with one stone.

“So this was worth taking four days.”

“Actually, I figured it out on the second day while discussing it with Director Bernard.”

“In only two days?”

“Then why didn’t you report it?”

“Even if I had a theory, I still had to make something that could apply its structure… If I merely said I had a theory, you wouldn’t have believed me, would you?”

Ferda nodded.

He had already heard plenty of long-winded theories from Burnell.

“So I spent two more days applying it and made this device! This is it!”

Burnell took out the object he had left behind the blackboard and showed it to them.

It was shaped like a chain with weights and the like threaded onto it.

The chain had been treated to serve as a conduit for mana, and complicated magical formulas were drawn on the weights.

Seeing it, Ferda grew a little uneasy and asked him,

“Can even a low-circle mage activate the magic formation?”

“A third-circle mage who knows how to activate a magic formation is enough. I managed it easily, so anyone who can channel mana should be fine.”

There was no way he had failed to consider that.

Third-circle mages were the same rank as the communication mages accompanying the young ladies and masters, so there was no problem.

“So, does it really work?”

Erika asked, looking down at the weight.

Even Burnell, who had been carried away with excitement, quieted at that moment.

“We have to try it now.”

No matter how excellent the theory, and no matter how carefully one made an object to which the formulas were applied, there were countless cases where the object failed to work.

For scholars and inventors, that was the moment of greatest frustration.

Now was the time to find out.

* * *

Isabella filled a jar with water flowing from the Demon Land and brought it to the castle.

It was the first time Ferda had seen what the water flowing from the Demon Land looked like.

It had a strange metallic smell and was reddish, like rust scraped from iron dissolving into water.

But unlike rusty water, this was lethal water into which they must remember not even to dip a hand.

“Th-Then we’ll begin.”

Burnell put the weight into the jar of water.

When it reached about halfway down, Burnell infused the chain with mana.

Vwoooong—.

Ripples trembled.

It meant that mana had flowed through and activated the magic formation.

Everyone watching held their breath.

No one wanted the result they had spent four days creating to fail.

A moment later, the murky water gradually began to clear.

At the same time, a mass of red crystals condensed around the weight.

Burnell carefully lifted the weight.

The red crystal clung to the weight like flesh and shifted with it,

while the water became astonishingly clear.

They say you cannot know something simply by looking at it, but this time was different.

It was exactly as it appeared.

“Good heavens….”

“There really is a method like this.”

Isabella and Erika could not contain their admiration after examining the water.

“How is it?”

“You really did remove the junk mana from the water, just as you said.”

“Of course, you couldn’t remove all of it, so a tiny amount of mana remains… but it’s at a level that’s safe even if it enters the body. In fact, it’s less dangerous than drinking groundwater.”

The fact that he had received their recognition filled Burnell’s chest.

This was not merely something worthy of recognition by academia.

What mattered was that Iorga’s Spawn of Water had said it.

Ferda also clenched his fist at his decision.

‘This was the right answer.’

They had done more than find a simple source of drinking water; they had gained a foothold for pursuing another stage of development for the territory.

‘They say war advances technology.’

The path he was walking was not leading toward an exit.

Rather, he was going farther inside.

He was walking toward the great treasure held within the labyrinth.

Ferda patted Burnell on the shoulder to encourage him for this astonishing achievement.

“You’ve worked hard.”

Burnell’s body swayed violently, and he collapsed on the spot.

It was the aftereffect of spending four days without proper sleep, devoted to research and invention.

Erika vaguely knew that as well, but she deliberately said,

“So that’s how it is? You kill a dog once it’s served its purpose…”

“…That’s not it.”

* * *

Under the leadership of Iorga’s Spawns, they temporarily diverted a water source from the Demon Land.

Since the water source was in the Demon Land, they kept it far from Hestia Village and drew water from there.

Isabella announced it to the village as a substitute for the current drinking-water supply.

“Isn’t water from the Demon Land dangerous?”

“I heard that drinking contaminated water can turn you into a monster…”

“But what else can we do? It isn’t as if it plans to rain anytime soon.”

“If the great rulers of water approve it, surely it’s safe to drink?”

Though they felt reluctant, they had no other choice.

And because they were willing to obey the words of an authority, the measure proceeded smoothly.

The problem, as expected, was the nobles.

Ferda and Erika made the announcement there.

“You expect us to drink water brought from the Demon Land!”

“Even so, isn’t this going too far? You might as well be telling us to die slowly!”

True to their upbringing as highborn nobles, they raged and shouted that they would drink only groundwater.

Ferda even demonstrated by drinking the purified water in front of their eyes.

He appeared to suffer no ill effects, but even so, it was difficult to quell the inflamed atmosphere.

“No matter whether you are Regent Ferda or a legendary adventurer, we cannot drink water like this.”

“What will you do if we turn into monsters after some time? Will you take responsibility then?”

They were spreading conspiracy theories to the point of seeming downright insolent.

Erika asked through telepathy,

-Should we just tell them to die?

Ferda did not say it aloud, but inwardly he agreed.

They were the sort who suited a short, powerful statement better than a tedious, pedantic explanation flaunting intellectual vanity.

Their spirited expressions were sure to change within a day, and Ferda would actually enjoy seeing that happen.

Olivia approached Ferda and asked,

“It really is safe, right?”

She looked back and forth between Ferda and Erika.

Erika answered,

“The leader of Iorga personally certified it.”

“That’s reliable enough for me.”

Olivia, too, neatly downed a glass of water.

“Hmm, it tastes clean.”

She sealed the matter by smiling brightly, inspiring confidence.

Only then did the nobles stop acting like children and begin drinking the purified water.

‘How strange.’

They had been groaning about dying when Ferda drank it, but seeing Olivia drink it, they gulped it down happily. It irritated him.

He glanced toward Erika and met her eyes.

The two of them merely nodded without a word, apparently thinking the same thing.

In any case, the drinking-water problem among the nobles was resolved as well.

‘The magic-stone problem has been solved, too.’

It was actually easier to extract them than from monster corpses.

He heard that the processing time had been reduced by a full two-thirds, so production of the magic stones used as fuel had doubled in speed.

This gave them enough time to prepare for another month.

Ferda also decided to properly organize his own abilities.

‘Four stars in the Red Circle and one star in the Shadow Circle.’

In terms of mana alone, that made him a five-star mage.

‘But I am not a five-star mage.’

Since he could not use Fifth-Tier magic, they could only say that he had far more mana than other Fourth-Circle mages.

That was a factor he could use as a trump card.

‘Besides, the Shadow Circle looks like a mere shadow at a glance.’

It was black, not made of blue mana.

Unless one focused properly, they would not notice that he had another circle.

Above all, since Ferda was a Red Circle mage, no one would ever imagine that he had a secondary circle at a lower tier.

‘I’ll use the Red Circle for lightning and the Shadow Circle for shadow magic.’

Having decided in advance how to manage his mana, Ferda focused on another matter.

He needed something to counter Gokma, and Ferda now had the tool for it.

‘Earthly Punishment.’

The gift Lucy Philiads had given him.

It was named that because it was punishment rising from the earth, rather than punishment delivered by the heavens.

To the eye, it was nothing more than a simple staff, and no one would ever think it was an artifact given by Lucy Philiads.

‘Come to think of it, didn’t she say it absorbs the power of a branch struck by lightning?’

Ferda took out the branch he had received from Ahmed Hashim as a token of friendship.

He held the branch against the staff.

Then he could visibly see particles or something hidden inside the World Tree branch flowing into the staff.

Srrr…

It absorbed everything without leaving a trace, and something astonishing happened.

Every trace of mana left by the World Tree branch vanished, turning it into an ordinary branch.

Even more astonishingly, despite absorbing all those traces, the staff gave off no sense of mana.

On a hunch, he channeled mana through it as before to test its power.

Crackle!

It was certain.

Its power had increased, and it had become more stable.

‘It was already more powerful than Dark Bolt….’

He wondered whether the Heaven-Defying Lightning Bolt might now produce firepower comparable to Lightning Spear, an existing Fourth-Tier spell.

An artifact that produced spell power one tier higher without side effects was beyond any price.

‘This gives me one more means at my disposal.’

The Heaven-Defying Lightning that could surpass even the strongest darkness in terms of destruction.

Shadow arts that deceived opponents and struck their blind spots.

“Hmm……”

He was pondering how to use these tools.

Ferda’s fights always began and ended with a display of power.

Unlike in the past, when he had shown confidence that he could overwhelm them, he now needed a strategy befitting a mage.

At the very least, he needed to be able to land the final blow when facing that man, Gokma.

Ferda began his research.

* * *

One month after the incident.

They had amassed an enormous army of 20,000 monsters centered around a mother monster.

Of course, not all of them were deadly monsters.

Half of them were slow and malformed, like Melteds, while the other half took the form of monsters or dangerous beasts.

Of those in the form of beasts, only around 200 were large monsters like bears.

Even so, if all of them charged at once, they would be helpless.

Erika judged that the army had grown large enough to move.

Olivia gathered all the staff in preparation for an all-out war and began the final strategy meeting.

Ferda also joined, heard their plans to prepare a defensive battle, and asked Count Consilius how things were going.

“Count, how are things on your end?”

-There is nothing to report. I am a man who has been waiting for this moment.

“Are you having any trouble with drinking water over there?”

-No. The water brought by Blue Eyes will let us hold out for another week.

They were receiving outside support, but they had sufficient grounds to receive it.

Burnell had shared the technology, saying that, based on it, they were giving them “a few samples for testing.”

Since the supplies were to be used in the campaign to conquer the Demon Land, they were merely fulfilling their duty as allies.

-Regent.

“What is it?”

-I would like to say this in advance. It has been an honor to serve you, even if only briefly. I only wish we could have met a little sooner.

Ferda wondered what had gotten into him, faced with such sentimental words.

It irritated him because it sounded like the last words of a knight going off to die on the battlefield.

“Don’t say useless things. If you begin to lose ground, retreat to Hestia without fail.”

-If this castle falls, I will bury my bones here. A knight’s duty is to kill even one more enemy to save a hundred people. I will kill a hundred more and save ten thousand. So please protect the people of this Grand Duchy.

“…I understand.”

There was no guarantee he would die, but Ferda decided to remember his words clearly nonetheless.

At that moment, Isabella burst through the door.

“The Demon army has begun to move!”

Had what was coming finally arrived?

Thinking so, Ferda rose from his seat.

But Isabella was not finished.

“But they’re headed in an unexpected direction!”

His body paused.

“What do you mean?”

“The thousands of troops we saw aren’t moving toward us. They’re moving in the opposite direction!”

“The opposite direction means…”

“They’re heading for the Imperial capital!!”

It was the exact opposite of what everyone had expected.

Before Ferda could even ask whether that was true, his communication crystal ball began to hum.

He had never expected that oily voice to sound so welcome.

-R-Regent! This is a disaster!

The Crown Prince, Alexander Arken, shouted in a voice full of panic.