What Changes, What Remains (14)

"Hmm..."

I let out a groan despite myself as I set down my luggage in the room I'd been lent, woven from vines and leaves.

Good grief, it was heavy.

After all, the magical tools I'd seized from the four people who attacked me in the Small Nations—and whom I'd defeated—made for a fairly bulky load.

Since I'd gone to the trouble of borrowing a place where I could settle in, I might as well organize my luggage a little.

I probably should have sorted through what I'd heard from the settlement's elves, but I still hadn't fully digested it myself.

Whenever I get stuck on a piece I'm making for a smithing exhibition, I find myself wanting to clean the forge for no good reason.

I suppose I'm in much the same frame of mind now.

Anyway, the magical tools I'd seized from those four consisted of four cloaks, one bow, three one-handed swords, and two small shields.

Leaving aside the bow, I took the cloaks, swords, and shields apart one by one, down to their individual components, in case spell formulas had been engraved on parts I couldn't see.

What I learned was that the cloaks, bow, and swords were exactly what I'd sensed them to be during that battle.

The cloaks wrapped their wearers in darkness, enhancing their stealth during nighttime activities.

The bow fired impossibly powerful arrows by increasing its strength and resilience.

The one-handed sword crackled with lightning and scattered it around itself; if an opponent blocked it with a sword or armor, the impact would deal damage and create an even larger opening.

As for the one-handed swords, they had all the necessary functions: restoration to protect the spell formulas engraved on the blades, protection to keep the lightning from flowing back into the wielder, and more.

But this small shield was a little beyond what I had expected.

After all, although this object was shaped like a shield, its function as a magical tool had nothing to do with being a shield.

As I've mentioned several times, magical tools easily lose their function if the shape of their spell formulas becomes distorted.

Thus, magical tools were more than a little ill-suited to defensive equipment, whose role was to block an opponent's attack—in other words, to withstand impact.

That was why I was especially eager to analyze the spell formulas on this small shield and see what sort of ingenuity had gone into it, but...

The role assigned to this small shield, and the spell formulas engraved on it, had nothing to do with blocking an opponent's attack.

The effect of the spell formula engraved on the shield, the magic it activated, was the production of light.

What's more, it had been adjusted so that only the shield's surface would shine brightly. Simply put, you held up this shield as if to block an attack, then channeled mana through it to make it emit light and blind your enemy.

It wasn't meant for use on a battlefield where large numbers of people fought in a chaotic melee. It was a magical tool made for nighttime attacks like the one the other day.

The impression it gave was closer to that of a concealed weapon.

Presumably, even Odine's army didn't yet believe that magical tools and their wielders were capable of changing the course of a battle.

These magical tools suggested an intention to use them for night raids or perhaps assassinations.

Kaushuman did want adventurers to use magical tools, if I remember correctly. Though, then again, a tool convenient for an assassin would be convenient for an adventurer too.

For my part, I had no intention of criticizing that policy. I found all the ingenuity and spell formulas incorporated into these magical tools quite interesting.

The research Kaushuman had pursued had advanced tremendously, as shown by the very existence of soldiers who wielded magical tools.

But that was precisely why I found it disappointing that the quality of the bow, swords, and shields themselves—not their functions as magical tools—was so lacking.

I would never say their quality was extremely poor.

As mass-produced goods, they passed muster.

That's right. As mass-produced goods, they passed muster.

At that time, Kaushuman and I had poured every bit of skill we possessed into crafting the flame magic sword and the magic sword I still carried at my waist.

In addition to Kaushuman's knowledge of spell formulas, I had the confidence that I had forged an indisputably superb sword myself.

If the magical tools that grew out of that work were all merely passing-grade mass-produced goods, I couldn't help but feel hollow.

It could certainly be said that the research and use of spell formulas had progressed.

But if smithing was neglected, it would lead somewhere different from the place the two of us had aimed for back then.

In fact, the quality of the objects themselves was only passable, and so was the precision of the techniques used to engrave the spell formulas. The slightest distortion would cause a formula to stop functioning.

Even restoration formulas meant to preserve a magical tool's function couldn't properly fulfill their role if they themselves were easily distorted.

In other words, these were consumable magical tools—not quite disposable, but close.

Of course, all weapons and armor eventually break with use, so being consumable is only natural. But the romantic ideal of a magic sword that Kaushuman and I had pursued should have been something else.

Even if there were things Kaushuman had no choice but to prioritize within his limited lifespan, and even if he couldn't pursue the ideal form, that was understandable.

Human beings can't spend forever pursuing romantic ideals.

Even so, as someone who had once been a dwarf's apprentice, he could never have forgotten his respect for craftsmen and their techniques. He should have continued to care about the details as well.

And yet, I could hardly feel any of that respect or attention to detail in the magical tools before me.

This was merely my own sentimental opinion, but even so, I found myself thinking it once more.

That flame magic sword—the romantic ideal Kaushuman had pursued—I would one day take back from Odine's army.

I decided that for most of these magical tools, I would make copies only of their spell formulas and have the tools disposed of at some smithy somewhere.

But recovering the flame magic sword would have to wait until the current situation had settled down.

It could be many decades from now, and that would be fine.

Anyway, at long last, to the main point: I heard three things from the elves of this settlement.

The first was that a forest farther south of here, in what had originally been territory of the Karkoym Duchy, had been attacked by undead.

The undead are beings formed when human corpses become monsters through the power of magic. If you picture a freshly turned zombie, you won't be far off the mark.

However, undead of this sort are actually fairly rare monsters.

The reason is that very strict conditions have to be met for a corpse to become a monster.

For example, if a corpse is badly damaged, the magical power soaked into the body leaks out immediately. In particular, a corpse with its abdomen badly torn open will never become undead.

Thus, in many places, when laying the dead to rest, people slit open the abdomen, remove the organs, place them in a jar, and bury them, taking measures to prevent the corpse from becoming undead.

Even if someone died alone outdoors, if beasts ate most of the body, the corpse wouldn't become undead.

Also, during periods when corpses decomposed quickly, such as summer, they would rot away before magical power could soak into them, so they wouldn't become undead then either.

That's why undead were monsters that almost never appeared.

The exceptions would be when an epidemic wiped out an entire village and no one remained to bury the dead, or when a war produced so many corpses that the funerals couldn't keep up.

In such cases, when corpses were unavoidably left unattended, large numbers of undead could sometimes appear.

In other words, the undead that attacked the forest in what had once been Karkoym Duchy territory were probably the remains of those who had died in large numbers during Zieden's invasion.

It was an entirely possible outcome of such a major war, but it wasn't pleasant to hear about.

The second was that Airena's elven caravan hadn't visited this area for several years.

This too was more or less what I had expected to hear.

I still didn't know whether Airena's group had stayed away because they were wary of Zieden, or whether this country had refused to let them enter.

But I, too, should probably stay wary of this country and avoid human settlements.

Finally, the third thing was that a few months ago, Zieden had requested that the elves living in the forests provide troops as inhabitants of this land.

What's more, they used the unit of soldiers who had brought the request to search the forests where the elves lived.

The elves had so far ignored a request that had not even come through the elven caravan, their contact with the outside world.

But apparently some elves feared that if they continued ignoring the request, it would lead to a war with humans.

Since the incident in the Kingdom of Rudoria, the elves had likely been honing their strength for self-defense as well.

Even so, there was no getting around the fact that they would be vastly outnumbered.

If the army attacked in earnest, the forests and settlements could be reduced to ash.

Zieden's objective in drawing the elves into a human conflict was completely unclear for now.

I suppose it would be more natural to assume that Zieden was refusing to let the elven caravan enter the country.

Zieden might be thinking of separating the elven caravan, which was accustomed to the human world and served as a point of contact, from the forest elves and bringing the latter into its fold.

The implications were deeply ominous.

If Zieden intended to make a move against the elves living in the forests, I might need to act as well.

If the elves and humans fought a quagmire of a war in which both sides suffered heavy losses, a rift would form between them for hundreds of years afterward, or perhaps even longer.

If that happened, it would ultimately result in fewer casualties to use the power of a High Elf to threaten Zieden into submission, or to move another country to bring the situation under control.

Of course, even then, it wouldn't be possible to avoid casualties altogether...

I let out a sigh and sprawled out on the floor.

The matter was too serious to decide hastily.

Yet if I did nothing but agonize and waste time pointlessly, things could reach the point of no return.

This really was a troubling dilemma, but if I didn't act, something would slip through my fingers.

I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled.

I calmed my agitated mind and invited sleep.

I would rest my body, replenish my strength, and be ready to act as soon as I awoke.