Chapter 110
Politically speaking, the way Gazer-kun and Mamono-kun are handled is complicated.
Illegally keeping a Class 1 monster is tantamount to terrorism, and given the scale of the damage one could expect, it is a capital-offense-level crime.
By rights, Gazer-kun and Mamono-kun should both have been sentenced to death, but the fact that both were extraordinary saved their lives.
There is no other Class 1 monster that is friendly to humans, docile, and controllable. Mamono-kun, who possesses the know-how to raise one and has the ability to serve as the core of the Ghost Gremlin mass-production project, is likewise an irreplaceable asset.
Gazer-kun becomes visibly displeased and rougher in their behavior whenever Mamono-kun is not nearby. Thus, the two are never separated, and they have been granted relatively free movement as a special exception.
The one person and one monster who had begun living in a supposedly new home—in reality, an isolation facility in the Chichibu mountains—were accompanied by monitors wherever they went and required to submit their schedules every day. Today, however, under the pretext that the Blue Witch was serving as their monitor, Mamono-kun had brought Gazer-kun to Okutama for a visit.
Hiyori told me to reconsider about three times, but in the end, she nodded.
Even so, she remained between Gazer-kun and me at all times, with the tip of Kyanos constantly pointed at Gazer-kun. I couldn't help thinking Gazer-kun might have been happier if she'd reconsidered after all.
Gazer-kun would probably freeze to death the instant they did anything suspicious.
When Gazer-kun came to visit my house, they were initially about two meters long and couldn't get through the entrance. But after shrinking to about one meter with a sound like air escaping from a balloon, they floated in after Mamono-kun. What a clever fellow.
Gazer-kun hid behind Mamono-kun while constantly moving the eyes at the tips of their tentacles and surveying their surroundings. Then their eyes met Mokutan's, who was peeking out from behind my back.
"Gii?"
"Mii? Nice to meet you. I'm Mokutan. Your magic power is amazing."
"Gii-gii."
"Can't talk? I'm a talking monster. I'm amazing too."
"Gii."
"...What's the sound of a creaking door?"
"Gii-gii?"
"Me—correct. Smart."
When Mokutan smiled, Gazer-kun was swept up in it and laughed too. "Gigegegege!" What a frightening laugh!
But the atmosphere was incredibly heartwarming. Was this really what a Class 1 monster looked like?
Once the mood had warmed up, I showed the peaceful Mamono-kun around my house. It was the return visit for letting me see his Kappa House.
Mamono-kun was a good listener, and I found myself getting carried away explaining all sorts of things. But as expected, the thing that interested him most was the Fire Lizard interior lamp.
His eyes lit up as he moved his face close enough to the Kappa mask's beak that it almost touched, then examined the lamp intently.
"Hmm. A monster Gremlin interior decoration? That's quite something."
"Oh, good eye! It's made by carving a Daidarabocchi's Gremlin. It's shaped like a Fire Lizard hatchling. And get this—watch... Ta-da! The tail actually catches fire!"
"Ooh~!? A-amazing! It really looks alive!"
His reaction made me proud. That's right, that's right. Even if it was a work from eighty years ago, the greatness of art transcended time.
"May I touch it?"
"Go ahead."
"Then, if you don't mind... Hmm. The texture of the scales... The jaw doesn't open... The eyes are carved too!? What bizarre craftsmanship... It goes beyond art and even has value to monsterology... Surely that makes it worth using a Class 1 monster's Gremlin..."
Mamono-kun muttered to himself as he picked up the interior piece and examined it, completely entering his own world. After a while, however, they came back to themselves. They set down the decoration, thought for a while, and then looked at me.
"Oori-san, do you take commissions for making statues?"
"Depends on my mood. And on the job."
"In that case, could you make a highly detailed stone statue of the Eyeball Witch-sama?"
"The Eyeball Witch's?"
That reminded me. There had been a stone statue and portraits of the Eyeball Witch in Mamono-kun's house. I hadn't thought anything of them at the time, but looking back, they must have had something to do with Gazer-kun.
When I asked for details, I learned that Gazer-kun and the Eyeball Witch were presumed to be members of the same species, and that Gazer-kun was at their happiest whenever they played with a statue of the Eyeball Witch. The statue in the Kappa House was Mamono-kun's own work.
If that's the situation, leave it to me. I'm good at making statues too. I even fashioned the Spider Witch's decoy to look exactly like Hiyori. A stone statue will be a piece of cake. I'll make one much better than Mamono-kun's.
Using some stone kept in the backyard, I dashed off a statue of the Eyeball Witch in about an hour. Gazer-kun, who had been playing with a frog they had caught in their tentacles, came drifting over. They dropped the frog, extended their trembling tentacles toward the statue, touched it, lifted it, and hugged it.
Instead of rubbing their cheek against it, Gazer-kun rubbed their eyeballs against it, crying "Gii-gii" as they gave me enthusiastic blinks with sparkling eyes.
"Gii, gigii...!"
"Hey, don't do anything suspicious. Step away from Oori."
"Ah, no, it's all right. They're just happy. They're thanking you for making the statue."
Mamono-kun hurriedly intervened as Hiyori looked suspicious and readied herself for battle.
Gratitude, huh? That made me kind of happy.
Class 1 monsters sure do warm up easily, don't they? Even this eyeball bastard can appreciate my art. Heh heh, it's suddenly starting to look cute.
"It seems to have recognized you as the divine sculptor of erotic dolls."
"Huh? I'd rather it didn't..."
I hadn't put any erotic elements into it at all. What an insult!
Species really do have wildly different values.
Gazer-kun became so absorbed in the high-quality statue of the Eyeball Witch that they wouldn't budge from the spot even with a crowbar. I left Hiyori and Mokutan to keep watch while Mamono-kun and I returned to the workshop to discuss payment. Making statues isn't free, after all. I don't sell my skills cheap. 0933 is the high-end line.
But the moment we started discussing payment for the statue, the doorbell rang to announce a visitor. When I went to answer it, I found a stoat with a flower-patterned parcel in her mouth.
"It's the professor."
"Hello, Oori-san. I arrived a little early."
"Come on in. Mamono-kun's here right now, though."
"Really? I wonder if there'll be enough cookies..."
Since the professor was here, I invited them into the workshop too. Mamono-kun's eyes bulged when the stoat came scampering in with a parcel in their mouth, but they seemed to recognize the professor's identity immediately. They stood up and bowed politely.
"Hello. You're Professor Kei Ohinata, correct? I've heard a great deal about you. My name is Mamono-kun, and I serve as vice president of the Japanese Society of Monster Studies. Please feel free to call me simply 'Mamono-kun.'"
For someone wearing such a strange mask, they had a perfectly ordinary greeting.
The professor seemed to know Mamono-kun as well. They flinched slightly the instant they saw the lifelike, disturbingly realistic Kappa mask, but quickly recovered. They climbed onto the drafting table, bowed politely, and returned the greeting.
"Thank you for the courteous introduction. I am Kei Ohinata, president of Tokyo Magic University. I've heard about Mamono-kun-san as well. They say you're a genius monster scholar born in Hokkaido."
"Oh, that's embarrassing. Compared with Professor Ohinata, I'm merely a youngster."
"If you live long enough, things naturally accumulate. I'm not nearly as great a person as people say, you know?"
"Please, don't be so modest. If Professor Ohinata isn't counted among the greats, every doctor in the world will be out of a job."
While the two of them engaged in this dull adult exchange, I opened the parcel the professor had brought and devoured the cookies.
Mmm, delicious. You've improved, Professor! Or maybe the ingredients have improved rather than your skill? Perhaps I should be amazed that such high-quality sweets can be made in the post-apocalyptic era.
I left one cookie apiece for the two of them, who were deep in conversation, and took a breather.
The mutual praise and modesty between Mamono-kun, who was following the professor's swaying, alluring tail with their eyes, and the professor, who was scrutinizing Mamono-kun's finely crafted Kappa mask, looked as though they might continue forever.
I wouldn't have minded listening to them talk beside me forever, but when the two noticed that I was spacing out while listening, they suddenly realized they had left me out and apologized.
"No, I kind of like being out of the loop. But if we're getting to the main topic, that's fine too. Professor, did you tell the university about the Golden Spiral Structure? How did it go?"
When I prompted the professor, they told me the results while holding a cookie in both hands and nibbling it.
"Regarding the Golden Spiral Structure, it turned out to prove a hypothesis. Seventy years ago, Professor Sataish in India first mentioned in a paper the possibility of connecting to a planet's core through some mechanism or magic. It's what's known as the 'Sataish True-Core Theory.' Until now, the existence of such a thing had only been predicted. You and Blue-san have now demonstrated it."
"Oh. There was a pioneer?"
I was a little disappointed that I hadn't become the pioneer of a new field, but there was nothing to be done. The Golden Spiral Structure and ley lines were things anyone who had dabbled in geometry or feng shui could have thought of. It would be stranger to assume no one had touched on them during the entire time I was dead.
According to the professor, the existence of ley lines and methods of connecting to them had been studied repeatedly.
This wasn't some vague idea like, "Earth became a fantasy world, so maybe it has ley lines or something?" It was a logical theory grounded in science.
In the previous era, there had been something called the Dynamo Theory.
In short, it was the theory that Earth was a giant magnet.
Earth's core contained a mass of molten, high-temperature metal that was constantly moving due to the planet's rotation and convection. This flow generated an electric current, and the current generated a magnetic field. On a planetary scale, the principle was not much different from the electromagnets we made in elementary-school science experiments.
This gigantic-ass planetary magnetism protected living things on the surface from harmful solar wind and cosmic rays raining down from space. Its magnetic barrier kept those attacks at bay. It was also what made compasses point north.
The problem was how this dynamo system had been affected by the Gremlin disaster.
Gremlins grew by consuming electricity. Since they could pass through matter and spread over extremely wide areas, they must have interfered with the power generation and magnetic-field production taking place deep inside Earth's core.
Normally, electricity generated in the planetary core created a magnetic field, and that field formed a planet-wide magnetic barrier. But if Gremlins stole that electricity, the field would no longer be generated, and the magnetic barrier would disappear.
Earth, having lost its magnetic barrier, would lose its defenses against the harmful solar wind, cosmic rays, and other things that constantly assaulted it from space, causing major environmental changes across the entire planet.
Or so it should have happened.
But it didn't.
Compasses still worked as usual, and auroras were still visible. No effects from solar wind or cosmic rays could be observed either.
Earth's magnetism continued to function. Something that should have vanished when the electricity was lost had not vanished.
There were two hypotheses that could explain this inexplicable phenomenon.
One was the theory that the Gremlins had a limit to how far they could spread.
At the center of the planetary core—the region of molten liquid metal—lay 2,900 kilometers beneath the surface.
The theory was that no matter how well Gremlins could pass through matter and spread, they couldn't penetrate 2,900 kilometers of solid rock.
The conditions 2,900 kilometers underground couldn't be confirmed, so it was only a hypothesis. But if it was correct, electricity would still be alive within Earth's core.
If the electricity was still alive, then so was the magnetic force. It neatly explained the fact that Earth's magnetism had not vanished.
The other hypothesis was the aforementioned 'Sataish True-Core Theory.'
It proposed that the electricity in Earth's core had been lost to the Gremlins, and that a new force resembling magnetism but not actually magnetic had been born in its place.
Based on the idea that Gremlins had penetrated the 2,900 kilometers of rock and reached the planetary core, this theory held that enormous quantities of Gremlins continued to grow in the core day and night.
The flow of the hot liquid metal generated electricity, which the Gremlins absorbed to grow. Once grown, the Gremlins melted into sludge under the intense heat and mixed with the liquid metal.
This was precisely what the late Professor Sataish had focused on.
Gremlins that grew by consuming electricity could be thought of as clumps of electricity. Humanity had no idea what would happen when enormous quantities of Gremlins mixed with metal under high temperatures and immense pressure.
Could the Gremlins be creating a force field that worked like the magnetism lost because of them?
This theory was reinforced by the discovery and study of magic metals, and it gained increasing support in academic circles.
Metal was altered and transformed by Gremlin interference. Abyss Gold, which is transformed by the pressure of the deep sea, was one example.
If that was possible, then it was hardly strange to think that Gremlins generated in the planetary core might interact with liquid metal under high temperature and pressure and transform into unknown magic metals.
The planetary core was transformed by Gremlins, gradually changing the planet's environment itself over tens of thousands of years.
In reality, formulas and estimates of the metals' compositions were involved, making things more complicated, but that was roughly the outline of the Sataish True-Core Theory.
"Okay, I get it, mostly.
So there's a gigantic Gremlin inside Earth's core.
That Gremlin is making an insanely huge amount of special magic metal.
Whether it's the force field produced by that magic metal or the magic metal itself, either way, something like that is the true nature of ley lines.
Is that right?"
"That's an excellent summary. To add one thing, according to the Sataish True-Core Theory, it takes at least about fifty thousand years for the magic metal produced in the planetary core to be pushed up or well its way to the surface. That also explains why Blue-san said the ley line was 'thin.' Earth's ley line must still be a newborn baby. Of course it's weak. Of course it's thin."
The professor finished explaining, and Mamono-kun and I both let out an awed, "Whoa..."
What a grand story. Fifty thousand years. It was an inconceivably vast span of time.
I had thought Earth's electricity had been sealed away, monsters had appeared, magic had spread, and the environment had undergone drastic changes. But apparently the transformation was still well underway.
It made sense that there was magic based on the use of magic metals.
In a magical civilization, natural magic metals must have been mined from the earth.
That civilization had already completed the journey Earth would now spend more than fifty thousand years making, and various magic metals were used as a matter of course.
Just as humanity took iron and copper for granted, magic metals must have been the universal, ordinary metals of a magical civilization.
It all made a lot of sense.
However, there were still things I didn't understand.
Before I could raise my hand to ask, Mamono-kun raised theirs and asked Ohinata-sensei.
"I understand the explanation of ley lines. But what is their relationship with the Golden Spiral? I heard that the Blue Witch-sama testified that her magic power mixed with the ley line through the Golden Spiral."
The stoat smiled with satisfaction at Mamono-kun for asking the question I wanted answered.
"That's exactly the point. Excellent observation, Mamono-kun-san. To give you the conclusion first, we don't know how ley lines and the Golden Spiral are related.
The Sataish True-Core Theory was only a theory on paper, and until Oori-san and Blue-san confirmed the existence of ley lines the other day, it wasn't even clear whether the theory was correct.
The Sataish True-Core Theory does mention connecting to ley lines. As we can tell from Demon King Gremlin, magical civilization must have been highly advanced. It's difficult to imagine that civilization not making any use of the energy or resources of ley lines. Humanity incorporated and used the geomagnetism originating in the planetary core as technology too—compasses, for example.
The fact that the Golden Spiral Structure was the method of connection is new information. As far as we know at present, the connection cannot be established without using material from Fuyou-san, and because the ley line is still immature, the connection is weak. It can only be perceived by someone with Blue-san's level of magical control.
We can look forward to future research into the relationship between ley lines and the Golden Spiral."
The two scholars seemed satisfied with the question-and-answer session and began chatting about related topics.
No, wait a second, you two. Why are you making those faces like you're going to sit back and wait for good fortune to come to you?
The fun starts here, doesn't it?
Professor Ohinata knows the Sataish True-Core Theory inside and out.
Mamono-kun knows all about the Golden Spiral Structures that monsters and Transcendents possess from birth.
And I'm extremely dexterous.
They say three heads are better than one.
Don't you think the three of us could put our heads together and solve this mystery?
"Professor, Mamono-kun, can I have a word? Mamono-kun, I'd like you to listen—consider it semi-compulsory payment for the statue commission—but would you two do some research with me? If we can access ley lines through a wand, it seems we might be able to draw an infinite supply of magic power out of one. In other words, I might be able to evolve my wand even further! ...Maybe. What do you say? Will you help?"
"Uh, well. I have to return to the Chichibu mountains by tonight, so I can only offer a little assistance. But if that's enough, I'd be happy to help."
"I'm in too. This isn't my area of expertise, so I don't know how much help I can be, but there's no way I could miss something this interesting!"
Both of them were enthusiastic, which was a relief.
It was nice to have more easygoing friends.
Now that we'd decided, there was no time to waste.
Let's all experiment!!