Chapter 109
I finally understood why Hiyori had told me, "If you're going to subscribe to a newspaper, make it the Karin Newspaper," after the resurrection-magic incident.
The Karin Newspaper, published by the Karin Newspaper Company, whose CEO was the Flower Witch, contained less information and was slower than other newspapers. On the day after the Tiamat attack, it put the Tokyo Bay Monster Battle on the front page like the others, but unlike them, everything from page two onward was business as usual: heartwarming news about a baby Dun being born at the Monster Park, elementary-school career-exploration visits to the prime minister's residence being added, where the children could shake hands with the prime minister, and so on.
The big stories got so little coverage that I felt unsatisfied and bought some other papers too, but wow, they were awful.
"Is Mamono-kun planning to invade Tokyo!?" "An exclusive interview on the monopolization of resurrection magic!" And so on—they kept hyping up all sorts of things, true or not.
Mamono-kun had no plan to invade Tokyo. But by phrasing it as "Is he planning to!?" they had just barely avoided telling a lie.
No one was monopolizing resurrection magic. In fact, a plan very far from monopolization was moving forward with the launch of a Ghost Gremlin breeding business. Yet the article's wording made it sound as though someone was trying to monopolize it and opposition forces were mobilizing against them. They criticized measures intended to prevent confusion and created a quagmire of confusion.
None of the articles quite went so far as to lie. But information of dubious origin and veracity had been inflated and scattered around to stoke subscribers' anxiety and curiosity. Since I had been involved in the series of incidents myself, I understood all too well how badly the information had been twisted.
On that score, the Karin Newspaper was diligent about verifying its information.
Its information was sparse and slow to arrive, but it was never wrong. The facts were summarized clearly and concisely. It had a loyal following among people who did not want to read unpleasant news but still wanted to keep up with the latest developments, and it had neither unnecessary sensationalism nor ideological bias.
...Well, maybe it did have some ideological bias.
The Karin Newspaper never wrote anything bad about the Alraune clan led by the Flower Witch, and its articles contained phrases subtly imbued with praise and affection for the Flower Witch. It put on this face of "I'm a pure and upright newspaper~" while being absolutely determined to manipulate information.
That's what you get from a witch who knows the tricks of the information age, from the heyday of electric civilization.
Even so, it was undeniably a relatively reliable source of information, so I would continue relying on the Karin Newspaper. It backed Fuyou too, after all. Naturally.
While I got information from newspapers, my privileged position also let me hear things directly from people at the center of the incident.
Hiyori would happily tell me all about the details of resurrection magic's capabilities and plans for its dissemination after making me swear it was off the record, while Mamono-kun would happily tell me about Gazer-kun, who had been secured in the Chichibu mountains, and the planned site for a Ghost Monster ranch. Professor Ohinata would even send me letters detailing the progress of his research into bypass incantations for resurrection magic.
Information controls were a mess, but this was fine.
After all, I was also happily telling everyone about the magic wand's no-incantation mechanism, which was on the level of a state secret, and the status of the analysis of Demon King Gremlin.
Oku-Tama had by now become a lawless zone for classified information. Wonderful!
It had not appeared in the newspapers, but apparently the materials from Tiamat, whom Hiyori had defeated, had been distributed among quite a few different organizations.
First, the Transcendent Alliance took its twenty percent share.
The Transcendent Alliance was the international organization that issued Hiyori's certificate for her Hollow Silver, and it collected twenty percent of the materials from Class 1 monsters defeated by Transcendents. In return, Transcendents could receive various forms of support beyond the framework of any one nation.
The government took ten percent.
In this case, it was the Japanese government. This levy varied according to the scale of damage caused by the defeated Class 1 monster, from a minimum of ten percent to a maximum of seventy percent. The income from these materials was used to compensate for monster damage and fund reconstruction.
Apparently, the government's share had not existed in the past, but there had once been a troublesome person who deliberately defeated Class 1 monsters in flashy ways while ignoring the damage to the surrounding area. Because of that idiot, a minimum ten-percent levy was imposed even when there was no damage to the surroundings.
Hiyori had kept collateral damage to a bare minimum in her battle with Tiamat, but ten percent was still collected and put into a reserve for the next time a monster caused catastrophic damage.
On top of that, the dismantling contractors took ten percent.
Class 1 monsters were often enormous, and Tiamat was no exception. If left alone, it would rot, while dismantling, transporting, and storing its materials were all major ordeals. Assessing the value of the materials also required specialized knowledge. Ten percent was cheap.
Once the related parties had taken forty percent, the remaining sixty percent became Hiyori's share this time.
When Hiyori asked whether there were any materials I wanted, I asked for a Gremlin as usual. And an ice-encased head while I was at it. Hiyori, who had presented me with an enormous, beautiful yellow Gremlin and a severed head, generously offered everything else to the adorable little stoat. Her devotion was a little worrying; she was giving away everything and keeping nothing for herself.
When I pointed out that she was giving away too much, she told me she already had enough assets for the two of them to live for a hundred years, leaving me unable to say anything more.
I guess she spent eighty years of her journey slaughtering Class 1 monsters left and right. I thought I was a pretty good earner myself, but the Blue Witch-sama was on another level.
Tiamat's Gremlins were three 60-mm ones, and they stirred my creative urge to figure out how to process them. But that would have to wait for now. I had too many things I wanted to do piling up.
First, dismantling Demon King Gremlin was only thirty percent complete. It was an extremely educational and fascinating project for a wandmaker, and I wanted to finish it quickly as a preliminary step to analyzing the Quodenenets of the Kingdom of Rus.
In addition, I wanted to try out some ideas for improving magic wands based on the biological mechanisms of monsters, inspired by what I had learned from Mamono-kun.
It was common knowledge among monster scholars with university-level education, but monsters had certain functions in common. The famous threat-based classification of monsters was "Class 1, 2, and 3," but there were even classification systems based on the functions they possessed.
For example, storage pouches. The ones belonging to Pouch Sparrows were famous, but Pouch Swallows and dragons had them too.
The abdominal pouches they possessed could hold objects regardless of their volume or weight. Since the pouches were always made of saggy skin, it was said that monsters with abdominal pouches shared a common ancestor.
Dragons and Pouch Sparrows were far too different for one to think they had a common ancestor, but so far, monsters with abdominal pouches had only been confirmed to be either flying monsters or monsters with vestigial organs for flight. The theory that dragons and Pouch Sparrows shared an ancestor was not entirely absurd. After all, they said birds were descended from dinosaurs.
What was interesting was the spiral structure found in some monsters.
Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio derived from them were also common in nature on Earth.
For example, the number of petals on lilies and cosmos flowers was governed by Fibonacci numbers. The arrangement of sunflower seeds was also determined by Fibonacci numbers.
Over the course of its long evolutionary history, nature had adopted the mathematics of Fibonacci numbers as one solution for improving the odds of survival.
The Golden Spiral, an embodiment of the 1:1.618 ratio derived from Fibonacci numbers—in other words, the golden ratio—also appeared as a characteristic of living things in nature, most famously in the shells of nautiluses.
In short, nature concealed mathematically regular spiral shapes.
The same could be said of monsters.
Some species of monsters had Golden Spiral Structures based on the golden ratio somewhere in their bodies.
Some possessed them as patterns on their surfaces, while in others, Golden Spiral Structures were engraved in their internal organs or bones.
This Golden Spiral Structure appeared more often in more powerful monsters. It was particularly conspicuous from upper-Class 2 monsters through Class 1 monsters, and Gazer-kun had one too. Tiamat had one as well. When I examined the severed head, I found the pattern in its eyes.
Just as I thought. Since it had fired beams from its mouth, I figured that if it had one, it would be in its head, so it had been worth ordering one.
Mamono-kun proposed the theory that the Golden Spiral Structure was not merely a biological feature or a trait common to powerful monsters, but a feature necessary for becoming powerful.
One piece of evidence was that many powerful monsters possessed this feature.
There were individuals among Class 1 monsters in which no Golden Spiral Structure had been confirmed, but if it happened to be in a part whose internal structure was difficult to examine, it was entirely possible to overlook it. For example, even if the arrangement of its blood vessels formed a golden spiral, it would surely be quite difficult to tell.
Some Transcendents also possessed Golden Spiral Structures.
Mainly the nonhuman types.
As far as Mamono-kun had confirmed, six of the seven nonhuman-type Transcendents had Golden Spirals in their body structures. The Illusion Mage, an invisible man, was one in whom it had not been confirmed, so apparently having a Golden Spiral was not guaranteed just because one's appearance differed from a human's, but the confirmation rate was extremely high.
Mamono-kun had also confirmed a Golden Spiral Structure in the Spider Witch. Apparently, the part connecting the bait inside the hollow in her abdomen to the main body had a Golden Spiral Structure.
This had not been confirmed in any spider-type monster other than the Spider Witch.
Fuyou had a Golden Spiral Structure too.
I had crawled beneath her petal skirt to examine her, and her primary root had extended deep underground while tracing a golden spiral. If Fuyou was like this, then her mother, the Flower Witch, was sure to have a Golden Spiral Structure too.
No plant monsters other than the Alraune clan had been confirmed to have a Golden Spiral.
Based on these examples, I concluded that the Golden Spiral was some kind of magically advantageous shape.
Did the Golden Spiral appear because it was a strong monster, or because it was a particularly powerful individual?
Or did possessing a Golden Spiral make it strong?
It was impossible to tell which was the case. But if it was a shape with a magical advantage, there was no reason not to incorporate it.
After observing in painstaking detail the Golden Spiral Structures found in monsters, Transcendents, and demonfolk, I took custody of Kyanos and incorporated a Golden Spiral Structure based on Fuyou's primary root into its handle. I also asked Fuyou to make the handle from the same material as her primary root.
Hiyori accepted the freshly modified Kyanos at the workshop, but the moment she took it in her hand, she let go with a start. Kyanos struck the workshop floor with a hard sound and rolled.
Hiyori took a wary step backward.
Oh.
I had thought it would be a bonus if it did anything at all, but apparently it had some kind of effect.
"How does it feel? What do you sense?"
"The flow of magic... is strange. What did you do this time?"
Hiyori seemed unsure even what she herself was feeling, so I explained the modifications I had made this time.
After hearing about the Golden Spiral Structure built into the handle, the change in material, and their origin, Hiyori cautiously picked up the wand and closed her eyes to concentrate.
"...When I try to pour in magic, I'm pulled along the spiral in the handle. When I resist it... it feels like something is being drawn up. How should I put this? It mixes."
"I have no idea what that means. Make it easier to understand."
I pressed her for clarification.
Maybe I'd understand what she meant if I could control magic myself.
It made no sense to me. Explain it so an ordinary person can understand.
Taking my request into account, Hiyori concentrated on the wand and thought carefully as she chose her words.
"You drink a beverage through a straw, right? If I had to compare it to something, it's like that. You suck up the drink, and when you pull your mouth away, the liquid in the straw flows back into the container on its own. This is gross, but some saliva mixes in at that point. When I let magic flow along the Golden Spiral and draw it up, some strange magic seems to mix in."
"...Hasn't that picked up some kind of infection? Maybe you should stop."
There had been cases like the Mushroom Pandemic and Shadow Loss Disease. It would be disastrous if some suspicious magic mixed in and gave her a strange disease.
Worried, I suggested stopping, but Hiyori shook her head.
"No. It doesn't feel harmful. If anything... this is..."
Hiyori stopped speaking, stopped moving, and fell silent for a long time.
From time to time, she tapped the floor with the butt end of Kyanos, tilted her head, and sank into deep thought.
She was taking so long to think that I brought a manga to the workshop and started reading.
But she was still deep in thought even after I finished one volume. This was taking forever. How long was she going to keep thinking?
Finally, when I had reached the middle of the second volume, Hiyori opened her eyes and returned her mind to the world around her.
"I think I've got it. This is... Hey, what are you reading? I've been struggling this hard, and—"
"I was bored. Was I supposed to sit around staring into space for an hour? So, what is it?"
"Sigh... Fine. To cut to the conclusion, I think I've connected to what people call a ley line."
"What?"
When I asked her to repeat the unexpected spiritual term, Hiyori repeated it uncertainly.
"A ley line. You can call it a dragon vein, a force line, or a life stream; I don't care what you call it. I accessed a great flow of power running through the planet. I think."
"I-I don't really understand, but it sounds amazing...!"
"I don't know what this means either. But it sounds amazing."
We both voiced elementary-school-level reactions, repeating that it was amazing.
It sounds amazing!!
"Hiyori, Hiyori, what does it feel like to access a ley line?"
"How should I put it... Amazing. But faint. Like dipping the tip of your tongue into a vast ocean of weak dashi stock and licking it...?"
"What the heck is that? So, uh, does that mean the ley line is enormous but low-powered, and the tap is small?"
"P-probably? I only managed to vaguely perceive it after sharpening my senses, so I don't really know. For now, it is something amazing. That much is certain."
I see. That's amazing!
So what exactly is so amazing about it?
I've understood that it's amazing for a while now, but I still don't really know what it actually is.
"What happens when you access a ley line? Can you draw out the planet's power and use it or something?"
"No. It doesn't seem to work that way. Or does it? The planet's power sounds like it should be tremendous, but the magic I can sense—the flow of power—is weak. I can sense the Pouch Sparrow much more strongly. Is this... weakened? No, immature? Or is the connection strength simply low?"
Hiyori was doing her best to put her sensations into words, but they came out so limp and vague that I could hardly understand them.
Hiyori herself, who was sensing the ley line, only had a vague, uncertain understanding of it. There was no way I could understand it merely by hearing her secondhand account.
Hiyori once again began muttering under her breath and entered her own world as she focused on the sensations coming through the wand, so I went to the kitchen to prepare tea and snacks for her.
Sorry as always, Hiyori. It's hard on you trying to master all the genius new mechanisms I keep creating.
But Hiyori was a genius too. I believed she would certainly discover the true nature of ley lines and how to use them.