The Big Explosion

It seems Primula's negotiations with the nobles went well, and her shop, which had been subjected to harassment, can reopen.

They immediately began preparing goods at the warehouse she had rented in the city, and the branch store also got underway.

Although the shop had been closed, the employees had continued receiving wages to prevent the trained staff from leaving, so it was able to reopen right away.

Iris's parents, the branch manager's parents who had invested in and cooperated with Primula's chain of stores, must have breathed a sigh of relief too.

Once business resumed, the shop was quickly flooded with customers. Many people had been eagerly awaiting its reopening.

Now that operations were back on track without any problems, Primula began presenting her proposal to Santanka Village.

She wanted them to produce dried fish and smoked salmon using fish caught in the lake, then sell the products in the city.

If an old man like me went there, they'd probably be wary, and we were already having a bit of a dispute with the village over the Crotton affair.

Primula, on the other hand, was the daughter of the family behind the famous Marlowe Trading Company. The Marlowe Trading Company was a major firm in Dalia, and the company that had made the draisines was well known even in Astrantia.

The difference in credibility was obvious. She was negotiating with samples of dried fish and smoked salmon in hand, and Primula worked at the Marlowe Trading Company as Marlowe-san's right-hand woman. She was also highly skilled at negotiations.

After all, she'd been taught business and negotiation skills since childhood. You could call it an elite education.

I also sent her off with a gift for the village: a sixty-centimeter-tall smoker, just like the one I used.

Nyamena was carrying it, but it was made of thin sheet metal, so it wasn't particularly heavy.

I was a little concerned that it might be too advanced for this world—but similar things could probably be made from cast metal or wooden boards, so it should be fine.

The only thing left was the smoking chips. There were beastfolk in the village, so with their noses, they probably wouldn't have much trouble finding fragrant wood.

――And then Primula came back.

"How did the village react?"

"Very well. Everyone said the smoked food was delicious too."

"Do you think they'll make it?"

"Yes. The village chief seemed enthusiastic, but then... um..."

Primula seemed to be having trouble saying something. Had something happened?

"Hmm? What is it?"

"They asked us to stop causing explosions in the lake, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to catch any fish."

"Ah, that was inconsiderate of us. Should we take them something as an apology? Is there anything good we could give them?"

"They wanted oil, so how about that?"

Oil would be easy to buy from Shangri-La. And it was cheap.

But we didn't have a container—so I searched Shangri-La for jars. I found a Shigaraki-yaki jar that held three masu, or 5.4 liters. This would do.

Along with the jar, I bought a can of canola oil and filled the container with it.

I could have Nyamena take it with her the next time we went to the village.

I could leave the village to Primula, but as for what I should do...

The commotion over Anemone had pushed it aside, but I wanted to experiment with drilling a hole in the cliff and using Anemone's magic for blasting.

If we could blast rock, we might be able to use it to mine ore in other places too.

I wanted to try it at least once.

After Primula and Nyamena left for work in the city and Myaree went hunting, I asked Anemone to help me with a magic experiment.

"Anemone, there's something I want to try with your Explosive Magic—Explosion. Will you help me?"

"Okay."

After receiving her agreement, I decided to proceed with the plan, but... how should I go about it?

I'd shifted the scaffolding to mine with Ko○tsu-san's hydraulic breaker, so there was no space left for us to climb up.

Moving the scaffolding again or building new scaffolding would both be a pain.

"Hmm, should I rely on the wonders of civilization again? I've mined plenty of rhodonite, after all."

When I searched Shangri-La, I found an M○tsubishi Ki○nter aerial work platform for 3.5 million yen.

Its arm was fifteen meters long, and the work platform attached to the end was quite spacious.

"This one, huh..."

It was used, of course, but with only twenty thousand kilometers on it, it was practically new for this kind of machine.

It had a diesel engine too, so it could use the biodiesel fuel I was making.

Hmm, should I buy it or not? That was the question. I agonized over it for a while, but...

"All right, here goes."

When I pressed the purchase button on Shangri-La beside the cliff, a blue vehicle with a long arm appeared in midair and bounced onto the ground.

This was the area Ko○tsu-san had leveled, so the ground should be hard enough.

In the end, I bought it. Whenever I got a little money, I immediately wasted it. I'd always been that way.

That's why I could never save much money. Meanwhile, the tools and items I hardly ever used kept piling up... I really was a cheapskate at heart.

But even knowing that, I couldn't stop myself.

"It's a new summoned beast! What will it do for us?"

"It extends that long neck and carries me up there."

"Amazing!"

――That was what I said, but I'd never operated a machine like this before. It would take some trial and error.

First, I climbed into the vehicle and fine-tuned its position, then checked the instrument panel in the driver's seat. I didn't have to worry about the fuel.

Next, I set up the four legs—the outriggers—to secure the vehicle in place.

Anemone and I climbed onto the platform, then took out a gasoline generator and a hammer drill from my Item Box and set them down.

When I operated the levers on the control panel, the platform carrying us began moving with the sound of hydraulic actuators.

"It moved!"

"This is my first time operating something like this."

I was operating it with great trepidation, but the control panel had labels for up, down, horizontal movement, rotation, and so on, so I could more or less figure it out.

It seemed I could even turn the engine on and off from there.

After struggling with the controls for the first time, we reached the exposed ore and I shut off the engine.

I started the generator and began drilling into the rock with the shortest drill bit.

Vibrations from pounding the rock sent white dust swirling through the air.

"Should I put on a mask?"

I bought a pack of twenty dust masks from Shangri-La—for 1,500 yen.

I put a mask on Anemone as well, then spent about an hour drilling a one-meter-deep hole, gradually replacing the bit with longer ones.

The bit managed not to break.

"Whew..."

"Is there really a hole in it?"

"Of course."

I took off my mask and turned off the generator. When I pressed the stow button on the platform's control panel, it automatically returned to its original position.

After climbing down from the aerial work platform, I looked up.

"You can't see the hole, can you?"

I stored the work vehicle in my Item Box and set it up again about fifty meters away.

Then I extended the arm, lifting us into the air.

"Even binoculars won't work at this distance... A telescope would show it upside down, though."

I searched Shangri-La for a spotting scope. It was a monocular telescope used for bird-watching and similar activities.

There was no point skimping on optics, so I splurged. I bought a K○WA model with fluorite lenses—for 180,000 yen.

It was something I'd wanted for a long time, and now I could finally buy one! In another world, no less.

I chose an angled model, the kind you look down into from above. It was easier to look through.

I also bought an eyepiece capable of zooming to sixty times, along with a tripod, and set it up on the platform.

"Let's see... Whoa! I can see it! I can see the enemy too!"

Who was the enemy supposed to be?

"Let me see!"

I let Anemone look through it too.

"Amazing! It's so far away, but it looks incredibly close!"

"What are you doing up there with that summoned beast, nya? Is it another new one, nya?"

When I looked down, Myaree and Bell were there. They had climbed along the arm and smoothly made their way up to us.

"I'm going to experiment with using magic while aiming at a single point on the cliff from here."

"One point, nya?"

I had Myaree look through the spotting scope.

"Nya?! Nyanya?!"

Myaree alternated repeatedly between looking through the eyepiece and looking at the cliff.

"The cliff looks incredibly close, nya! Is it magic, nya?!"

Naturally, I told her it was magic.

"What do you think, Anemone? Can you use Explosive Magic—Explosion inside that hole while looking through this?"

"Hmm, I won't know until I try... But you won't get mad if I fail, right?"

"Haha—of course I won't. This is an experiment. I'm asking you to do something knowing it might be impossible."

"Okay. I'll try."

For safety, I took a long polycarbonate shield out of my Item Box. It was the same one we'd used during the battle against Shaga.

"Inhale, exhale..."

Anemone spread her arms and took deep breaths repeatedly. Like Myaree, she alternated between looking at the cliff and looking through the scope.

"Hmm... Hmm..."

"You don't have to push yourself, you know?"

"Be quiet!"

Then she became completely still, staring through the scope's eyepiece.

"What is she doing, nya?"

"Shh!"

I stopped Myaree, who had asked in a whisper, and prepared myself.

"Explosive Magic—Explosion!"

At the same moment as her voice rang out, part of the cliff blew away with a tremendous roar, sending white dust swirling through the air.

But it seemed to have exploded on the surface of the cliff, and not much of the cliff had collapsed... It was a failure.

"I'm sorry."

"Ah, it's fine, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Trying to put magic into a hole only a few centimeters wide from that far away was probably asking too much."

"You used magic on a tiny hole that far away, nya?"

"That's right. We couldn't collapse the cliff, but we learned that I can use magic while looking through this. I could even take down monsters from a distance."

"That's right, nya! You could take something down from so far away that you couldn't even see it with your own eyes, nya."

"But if you use Explosive Magic—Explosion, the prey will be blown to pieces..."

"Hmm, that's true. Still, it's incredible that you can use magic on something that far away!"

"Really? Hehe..."

Anemone gave a bashful little laugh, but I honestly thought it was incredible.

This could be useful.

------◇◇◇------

I bought a parasol and a deck chair from Shangri-La—the kind lined up on beaches at resorts.

The parasol cost around 10,000 yen, and I bought a deck chair with a wooden frame and fabric stretched across it. You see things like these in movies too, don't you?

I'd always wanted to try one—this one cost 7,000 yen.

I reclined on the deck chair I'd set up beside the lake and drank iced coffee in the shade of the parasol.

"Whew~"

The iced coffee was a cheap one in a paper carton, though. Still, it was the feeling that mattered.

I could have bought a siphon and coffee beans from Shangri-La and brewed it properly, though.

I charged a mobile battery with a solar panel, then used it to run an ice maker.

Once I had made ice, I could put it in my Item Box and use it whenever I wanted.

If I ever went somewhere cold, I could stockpile a large amount of ice. It might even come in handy for business.

What a peaceful, idyllic scene.

In the midst of that peaceful scene, I leisurely read a book. The e-book was about explosives.

Since Explosive Magic—Explosion had failed as a blasting method, I decided to try using explosives instead.

Besides, I had realized that in this world, we might be attacked by huge monsters like the enormous spider we'd fought in the cave.

We'd somehow won the battle against the spider, but I decided we needed a powerful weapon.

Anemone had also learned to use powerful magic like Explosive Magic—Explosion, but she couldn't fire it several times a day.

It was better to have more options for attack.

I considered guns too, but although I could probably make the mechanism using a model gun as a reference, making the ammunition would be difficult.

I would hesitate to use such a dubious modified gun in actual combat. If it accidentally discharged, broke down, or failed to fire at a crucial moment, it would be completely useless.

Reliability was what mattered in a weapon.

I thought I could manage a muzzle-loading percussion gun, but at close range, it probably wouldn't be much more powerful than a crossbow.

They would be highly effective if I had many of them and operated them as a unit, but having just one muzzle-loader... In other words, there wasn't much benefit.

As an experiment, I had Myaree and the others throw fist-sized stones, and they managed to hurl them more than two hundred meters. At that point, we didn't even need a launcher.

In short, as long as we had explosives, we didn't need guns.

Now, explosives—in other words, so-called gunpowder. The standard choice in another world would be black powder.

Fortunately, Shangri-La had all the ingredients for black powder. Charcoal was sold normally, and sulfur could be obtained as a bath additive.

The problem was saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, but that could be dealt with too.

Saltpeter itself wasn't sold, but the contents of one of the mysterious products available from Shangri-La was potassium perchlorate, which could be used as an oxidizer.

Another possibility was... I had a magic tool that could separate liquids, so I could make concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid from things available on Shangri-La.

Toluene and cellulose were sold there too, meaning I could make TNT—trinitrotoluene—and nitrocellulose, but...

Even if I made things like that at the level of a science experiment, I wasn't sure I could produce anything fit for practical use.

Black powder was still the leading candidate, but there was something else I wanted to try.

Ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosive—ANFO, made using ordinary fertilizer.

I'd seen bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer piled up at an agricultural cooperative and always wanted to try it!

――I'd been thinking that for a long time. Of course, if I'd done something like that in my original world, a black-and-white car would have come speeding over with its red lights flashing. But this was another world.

There was no need to hold myself back. Fortunately, Shangri-La sold ammonium nitrate as fertilizer too.

If it hadn't, the mysterious product that cooled when struck contained ammonium nitrate, so I could use that instead.

ANFO was made simply by mixing ammonium nitrate with a small amount of the mysterious substance—it was extremely easy. It also rarely exploded, making it quite safe.

――Or rather, it was difficult to make it explode. It wouldn't explode even if you set it on fire or ran electricity through it.

The primer required a small amount of a different explosive. Black powder wouldn't work.

But I had a girl under my command who could use Explosive Magic—Explosion.

We might be able to detonate ANFO with her magic. If it worked, we could conserve her magic and use it for blasting the rhodonite we were mining.

――That was the conclusion I reached.

I put the plan into action immediately.

I bought ammonium nitrate from Shangri-La, emptied the pink powder into a stainless-steel bowl, and mixed in some of the mysterious substance from my Item Box. That was all there was to it.

What should I use as a container...? This called for the pressure-cooker bomb favored by extremists.

I bought the smallest pressure cooker on Shangri-La and disabled its emergency pressure-release valve.

Then I packed the finished ANFO into the pressure cooker, and it was complete—simple. In actual combat, I could mix in nails to increase its power.

"Hey, Anemone! Come help me with another magic experiment!"

"Okay."

"What are you doing, nya?"

Myaree, who was with us, seemed interested too.

"It's a magic experiment."

"Again, nya? The Sage sure thinks about all sorts of things, nya~."

"I suppose I do."

I put a helmet on Anemone and raced along the lakeshore on the off-road motorcycle. If we conducted explosive experiments too close to home too often, Santanka Village might complain again.

We traveled about ten kilometers along the lake, and Myaree ran after us.

I took the pressure-cooker bomb out of my Item Box.

"Myaree, throw this over there for me."

I pointed toward the lakeshore.

"Got it, nya~!"

She gripped the cooker's black handle and swung it. The pressure cooker flew in a high arc and traveled quite a distance.

It landed beside the lake and bounced along the ground, but it still didn't explode.

"Even a pressure cooker can fly that far? What incredible power."

I took a laser rangefinder out of my Item Box and measured the distance to the cooker—it was ninety-eight meters. That was absurdly far.

I crouched beside the lake and took out the spotting scope and a polycarbonate tower shield.

"Anemone, can you use Explosive Magic—Explosion inside that cooker? It doesn't need to be powerful."

"A small Explosive Magic—Explosion?"

"Yeah, just a little pop!"

"I'll try."

She also looked through the scope with half her body hidden behind the shield.

"The target is bigger, so I think this will be easier than before."

"Do you think you can do it?"

"Yes."

"Then go ahead and try."

Anemone focused her mind and began preparing the spell.

"Hm! Explosive Magic—Explosion (Small)!"

――At that moment, the pressure cooker exploded with a tremendous roar, leaving a cloud of white dust behind.

Explosive Magic—Explosion usually produced a fiery blast with red flames, but this was nothing but a blast. A shock wave came racing along the ground toward us.

Since the explosion was more powerful than the Explosive Magic—Explosion she'd used, the detonation had to be a success.

"What an incredible noise, nya! It's different from Explosive Magic—Explosion, nya?"

"Alchemy makes it possible to cause a huge explosion with only a little magic."

"Wow, Kenichi, you're amazing!"

"With this, we could create explosions like Explosive Magic—Explosion over and over, even if we were surrounded by a large number of enemies, right?"

"Yes!"

People say magic doesn't work on monsters, but this was a purely chemical reaction, so wouldn't it work?

I wouldn't know until we tried it, though.

When we returned home, I took the aerial work platform out of my Item Box again and packed the pink ANFO into the hole we'd drilled earlier.

To make the target easier to see, I drew a circle around it with pink spray paint.

Then we decided to try blasting it again from a distant location.

This time, we only had to aim at the surface of the cliff, so there was no need to ride the aerial work platform.

I took out the shield and spotting scope from my Item Box and prepared for the blast.

"This time, we don't need to aim inside the hole. Just hit the surface, where the powder is packed, with a small Explosive Magic—Explosion."

"Hmm, I think I can do that."

"Then go ahead and try."

"Okay."

She looked through the spotting scope and focused her mind.

"Should I aim at the center of the red circle?"

"That's right."

"Hm! Explosive Magic—Explosion (Small)!"

With a boom like a cannon, a large section of the cliff collapsed, and white smoke rose into the air.

"I did it! It worked!"

"It worked?!"

"Yes! Amazing! You did it, Anemone!"

I picked her up, leaving her little feet dangling in the air.

"Hehe..."

She could use the small version of Explosive Magic—Explosion as many times a day as she wanted. We could blast rocks to our heart's content.

After that, we blasted the cliff about three more times and recovered ten million yen worth of rhodonite.

The aerial work platform had more than paid for itself.

The orange ore vein was exhausted after that, bringing the mining to an end, but we'd also learned that ANFO could be used quite effectively.

This will make all sorts of things go much more smoothly... And it's given me something else to look forward to.