Chapter 119
Ultimately, the CEO (chief executive officer) of China's Gremlin-industry corporation, the Wuxian Group, won the Golden-Jade Wand with a bid of 81 billion yen. In terms of the previous era, that was equivalent to 162 billion yen.
That was the scale of a small or middle-sized country's national budget.
The Wuxian Group, which won the bid, traces its origins to Taotie, a Class A-1 monster that once ravaged China.
Taotie was a vicious monster that devoured living creatures and grew without limit, spreading gaseous pseudo-bodies mainly through China's urban areas. In the several years before it answered the Demon Lord's call and left for America, it brought death to a region extending more than 500 kilometers in every direction.
No one survived within Taotie's sphere of influence. In China, Taotie was even more infamous than the Demon Lord.
People who had escaped the disaster from the surrounding areas settled in the vast void where life had once existed.
The fertile land along the Yangtze was especially productive. Seeds of all kinds of crops were brought in, and ranches for domesticated monsters—in other words, magical beasts—were established.
The largest and most organized of these magical-beast ranches was founded by a group led by a Transcendent, known locally as a "xian," who had escaped Taotie and hidden in the mountains.
This became the Wuxian Group.
The Wuxian Group diligently reclaimed the uninhabited land and built vast magical-beast ranches.
India also has a thriving magical-beast industry, but the industries of India and China have different characteristics.
India specializes in using the leather, bones, fangs, and meat obtained from magical beasts. It is also the world's largest exporter of the tiger monster Dun, an excellent mount.
China, on the other hand, specializes in breeding Gremlin-producing monsters, led by the Carbuncle.
The Carbuncle is a gigantic monster about the size of a car, resembling a rabbit with a red Gremlin growing from its forehead.
It is classified as a Class B-2 threat, but it is nonhostile toward humans. It also sheds its Gremlin, and the Gremlins it sheds naturally have a two-layer structure.
The Gremlin on a male Carbuncle's forehead naturally falls off once it reaches a certain size. The Carbuncle stores the shed Gremlins in its nest to attract females.
The more numerous and higher-quality the Gremlins stored in its nest, the more clearly a male can show females that he is well nourished, healthy, long-lived, and strong.
When a female takes a liking to a male's nest, she devours the stored Gremlins and gives birth to as many young as the number of Gremlins she ate.
The Carbuncle-breeding industry works by offering food to male Carbuncles, disguising oneself as a female, sneaking into their nests, and stealing the Gremlins.
The fact that the Gremlins are naturally two-layered, spherical, and reasonably large is a major advantage. They can be used as wand cores without any modification.
The Wuxian Group also breeds magical beasts with other useful Gremlin-related traits on a large scale, such as beasts whose Gremlins regenerate soon after being gouged out, and beasts that eat Gremlins and fatten their own Gremlins to a certain size.
The rich soil of the Yangtze basin produces huge quantities of crops, those crops feed huge numbers of people and magical beasts, and those magical beasts produce huge quantities of Gremlins. Through this cycle, the Wuxian Group has made a name for itself as the world's largest Gremlin producer. It is an indisputably global-scale corporation.
The Wuxian Group has the financial power to pay 81 billion yen.
The discovery of resurrection magic and the sudden surge in demand for the Ghost Gremlins essential to resurrection magic have brought the magical-beast industry into the spotlight.
Just as Japan has invested in Mamono-kun and begun research into Ghost Gremlin production, the Wuxian Group has also received massive investment and is on an upward trend. Its market capitalization continues to rise as well.
Since paying 81 billion yen in cash all at once would be difficult, though not impossible, the Wuxian Group offered to pay with a combination of cash and transferred shares.
I don't know much about that sort of thing, so I left the negotiations entirely to the Spider Witch.
I understand that shares can be assigned a price and converted into cash for payment, but I can't make heads or tails of talk about unrealized gains, resistance levels, income gains, and the like. I could probably understand it if I took the time to study, but if I have enough time to spend that much effort on a field I have no interest in, I'd rather make one more wand.
The Golden-Jade Wand I made was valued at 81 billion yen. Knowing that much is enough for me.
A large part of the reason the Golden-Jade Wand was valued at 81 billion yen was probably the technology fee. It was clearly an exorbitant price compared with the wand's practical utility.
Without the silent-casting mechanism built into the Golden-Jade Wand, the price would never have risen so high. I understand that, which is why I included the blueprints, materials, and complete manufacturing process for the simple silent-casting mechanism used in the Golden-Jade Wand.
For the eighty years leading up to the present, silent-casting magic had been the Blue Witch's exclusive domain, with the exception of Iruma.
If obtaining one part of the secret behind the Blue Witch's legend of invincibility is worth 81 billion yen, then it is apparently a worthwhile price.
That said, it's the most basic mechanism. Its performance is only two generations below Kyanos's.
As long as people use my technology as a model and merely follow in my footsteps, they will never surpass it. After all, I have the Demon King Gremlin as my example.
Since they went to the trouble of paying such an absurd amount of money to buy it, I won't sell any other silent-casting mechanisms for a while, out of courtesy.
But the technology will spread eventually anyway.
Magic University still has the Demon King Gremlin parts and analysis data I sent them long ago, and Mr. Yamagami is using them to develop new technology.
If a corporation as large as the Wuxian Group starts a major silent-casting-mechanism industry, it will draw attention, and industrial spies will inevitably appear.
The Wuxian Group will use the silent-casting mechanism I created with the Demon King Gremlin as a reference, and then other countries will use the Wuxian Group's mechanism as a reference, and so on. That chain of events is certain to happen.
Considering that, it would be better to think of the 81 billion yen as a fee for getting a head start on the technology, rather than as a fee for exclusive ownership of it.
Eventually, silent-casting mechanisms will spread throughout the world. But by winning the Golden-Jade Wand, the Wuxian Group gets to begin researching and developing silent-casting mechanisms ahead of all other organizations. That head start is what the Wuxian Group paid 81 billion yen for.
For several days after the auction ended, I couldn't grasp what 81 billion yen was worth.
It was too much money for me to comprehend.
The 81 billion yen included shares, and 35 percent of it would be taken by the government as income tax.
According to the Spider Witch's interim report on my finances, the amount that would actually show up as an increase in my bank balance would somehow come to around 5 to 10 billion yen, but even that still didn't feel real.
I couldn't spend that much money in a thousand years. What am I supposed to do with it? Having this much is meaningless.
My goal was to put a high value on my wands and satisfy my pride, not to spend the money I earned.
I could dump the money into some random place, like I did with the factory in Shinagawa, but I couldn't think of any promising investment targets.
The Spider Witch refused when I tried to invest in her Spider Silk brand or Fuyou's rice brand. Fuyou even said something like, "If anything, I'll pay you, so sign a pledge saying, 'When you die, you'll become Fuyou's fertilizer.'" She's scary.
At a loss, I asked Mamono-kun, who had come to Okutama, for advice on how to spend the money.
Mamono-kun comes to Okutama fairly often. He frequently uses it as a meeting place with the Professor, but today he had come to ask Hiyori about ghost monsters.
Hiyori has encountered all kinds of ghost-type monsters during her long travels and knows more about monsters than even a mediocre monster scholar. She knows more about how to defeat them than how to raise them, but she still possesses mountains of information worth a fortune.
Mamono-kun arrived at noon and monopolized Hiyori until evening, when Hiyori ended their conversation by telling him she was going to prepare dinner because she was tired of talking.
When he tried to leave, I caught him, made him sit down in the living-room chair again, and asked for advice on how to spend the money. Mamono-kun poured the teacup's warm water onto the dish on top of his head to moisten it, then spoke thoughtfully.
"If it were me, I'd invest in the magical-beast industry. Protecting rare monsters, offering rewards for the discovery of kappa, or even researching and breeding ghost monsters."
"Of course you would, Mamono-kun. But don't you have anything more suited to me?"
I don't dislike monsters. I keep Mokutan, after all. I also like the spider monsters under the Spider Witch.
But they weren't quite right as destinations for an absurd amount of money.
When I objected, Mamono-kun calmly began listing his thoughts.
"No, no. In fact, I think investment is a perfectly good option. You don't have to invest in the magical-beast industry. When an individual has more money than they can spend, the usual choices are donations or investment."
"Ahh, I can kind of see that."
It was true that I had an image of the wealthy people of the previous era investing a ton and doing a ton of charity work. That made sense.
"What about putting it into savings with an eye toward your future with the Blue Witch-sama?"
"The future? What do you mean?"
"You two are seeing each other with marriage in mind, aren't you? A wedding, a new home, a private tiger monster for family use, and various other expenses will come up. If you want to increase your spending around the time of your marriage, there are countless ways to do so."
"Marriage? No, Hiyori and I haven't talked about anything like that."
"Oh. Is that so?"
Mamono-kun glanced toward the kitchen and tilted his head as he listened to the sounds of Hiyori preparing a home-cooked meal.
"We only talked about staying together for another eighty years and what to do about children."
"...You discussed all that without discussing marriage?"
"We didn't."
"???? ...Well, I suppose everyone is different. Everyone is different."
Mamono-kun repeated it as if trying to convince himself.
What the hell? If you have something to say, just say it.
"If you're not considering savings, then perhaps donations? To a charitable organization or something."
"Not a bad idea. But I've heard there are tons of parachute organizations pretending to be charities. I don't have a very good impression of donations."
"Ah. I'm not an expert either, but I believe there are occasional news stories about authorities cracking down on them. If you're reluctant to donate, then I still think investment would be best."
"So it really comes down to that. Do you have any investment targets you'd recommend, Mamono-kun?"
"Recommendations? You mean something other than the magical-beast industry?"
"Yes."
Mamono-kun nodded, then counted off potential investment targets on his fingers.
"Steam-engine-related industries have been stable for a long time. The Hitsugi Group recently acquired the oil plant at Lake Biwa, and stock trading in that sector is always active."
"The Gremlin industry is stable, too. Which company was it again? Recently, a company that invented some new kind of Gremlin—elastic? Resilient? Something like that—was soliciting investment."
"The Frontier Development Corps are closer to donations than investments, but they are an option. The Defense Ministry ends up holding the real power anyway, so if you want to influence the Frontier Development Corps, sending people is more meaningful than sending money."
"As for start-ups, magic calculators are the hottest thing right now. I'm sure Oori-san knows about this, but there has been talk of Yamagami, the inventor of the magic calculator, taking the lead in opening a research institute. It is closely related to Oori-san's own work, so investing there would be meaningful."
"Among foreign companies, perhaps Life Iron? I've heard that the Kobayashi Ittoryu agreed to lend out its magic sword in exchange for assistance with expanding into America. It's unclear whether that will lead to a breakthrough in Life Iron research, but that's precisely why a large investment now could pay off handsomely if it hits."
Mamono-kun listed all kinds of candidates, but none of them really clicked with me.
Listening to him, I realized that I had heard of all of them before. None of them felt fresh or unexpected.
Investing in things that were already attracting attention didn't seem very interesting.
Besides, Mamono-kun seemed to be choosing investment targets based on whether they promised a return.
I didn't care about that sort of thing.
Returns and all that didn't matter to me. In fact, I would be in trouble if I made a profit. I was investing to spend money, so if I made money, I'd just end up with more of it.
"Sorry to be so demanding, but do you know of any investments that would be interesting yet unprofitable?"
"U-unprofitable investments? In that case, I think you should just donate the money. If you don't like donations, perhaps a hobby? If it's related to magic wands, you could spend any amount of money collecting 0933 wands... Ah."
"Sorry. I'm the one who makes them."
Sorry for being a money tree!
As I shot down every suggestion, saying this one was no good and that one was no good, Mamono-kun grew troubled. I was troubled, too.
"This is getting annoying. Maybe I'll just invest all of it somewhere at random."
"All 81 billion yen!? Then give some of it to the magical-beast industry. It's a good investment, you know? Magical beasts."
"What, isn't that just favoritism on your part, Mamono-kun?"
"No, no, not at all. It's a wonderful investment that contributes to world peace."
"That's an exaggeration."
"It isn't an exaggeration. There is even a competitive-exclusion peace industry."
"What's that?"
Intrigued, I asked him to explain, and learned that the magical-beast industry really did make a tremendous contribution to world peace.
Using magical beasts as military force to defend humanity's habitable zones against external enemies was one part of it, of course, but the competitive-exclusion business was even more important.
Competitive exclusion was, in other words, the occupation of territory.
The troublesome thing about monsters is that animals can suddenly mutate into them one day. Monsters born from monsters are still the lesser problem, but rats, locusts, and other creatures found all over cities can transform overnight into man-eating monsters.
Monsters that come from outside humanity's habitable zones can be eliminated.
But dealing with monsters that arise naturally inside humanity's habitable zones is difficult.
That is why monster scholars have spent the past several decades trying to control monster generation, with major successes.
The basic principle is to create an ecosystem of harmless monsters in order to drive out harmful ones.
The most famous example, one taught at the very beginning of every textbook, is the underground sewer ecosystem.
Long, long ago, slime monsters multiplied in huge numbers in the underground sewers of the Witch of Hell's administrative district.
The monsters that had secretly multiplied underground advanced to the surface in search of food, forcing the Witch of Hell to wipe out the entire swarm of slimes and the city around it with a wide-area spell that came dangerously close to running wild.
The same thing happened in major metropolitan areas around the world that had extensive sewer networks.
Some cities managed to deal with it, while others failed and perished.
This tragedy can be prevented through competitive exclusion.
First, you prepare ropers, a competing species of slime.
Ropers are monsters resembling masses of tentacles, and like slimes, they live in dark, damp waters. They eat the same food as slimes, too.
Unlike slimes, however, ropers do not attack humans unless attacked first. Their habitat and food overlap almost completely with those of slimes, yet they are far safer.
If ropers are released into an underground sewer system and allowed to multiply sufficiently, any slimes that arise naturally will lose the struggle for survival against the ropers, the established species, and die out. A terrifying mass proliferation of slimes will never occur.
Peace is created through the struggle for survival between monsters.
This is competitive-exclusion peace.
When competitive-exclusion peace works perfectly, even the spontaneous generation of monsters disappears in the first place.
Monsters are born when the animals they originate from mutate.
If the animals that serve as the source of monsters do not exist, monsters cannot arise in the first place.
For example, the Pouch Sparrow is a monster that mutates from an ordinary sparrow, but ordinary sparrows lost the struggle for survival against Pouch Sparrows and went extinct.
Therefore, an ordinary sparrow cannot go to sleep and wake up as a Pouch Sparrow.
There are no sparrows left to mutate in the first place.
Likewise, if every animal in the world were transformed into a monster and all ordinary animals driven to extinction, incidents in which monsters suddenly appeared in cities would disappear from the world.
Doing that on a global scale is currently impossible, but it has been almost achieved in India's capital and in Tokyo as well.
Even replacing the Earth-native animals in a single limited region with harmless monsters is extraordinarily effective.
This is unquestionably one of the reasons the world has become safer compared with the past.
There is even a national qualification called a "Monster City Designer" for handling competitive-exclusion peace through monsters. Selecting and breeding monsters suited to a region, negotiating with local residents, and managing the ecosystem until it stabilizes all take time and money.
In India, this is carried out as a national project, while in other major countries, the work is entrusted to corporations.
Mamono-kun passionately explained that although Japan's Monster City Designers made a major contribution to national security, they had little name recognition, little popularity, and were treated unfairly.
"So, with that in mind, we are always accepting investments in Monster City Designers. And they are completely unprofitable...! Unfortunately! How about them as an investment target? Even just ten thousand yen?"
"All right. I'll sink 81 billion yen into it."
"!?"
"Oh, sorry. Since income tax will be deducted, it might be closer to 50 billion yen. Discuss the details with the Spider Witch-san. I'll let her know."
I'm an idiot, so I don't really get it, but...
Paying 50 billion means the world becomes more peaceful, right!?
I'm a genius, so I think that's a good thing!
Well, in practical terms, I was also benefiting from the competitive-exclusion peace Mamono-kun had described.
Fuyou putting down roots in Okutama and the Spider Witch completely ruling it through the spider monsters under her command was the very definition of competitive-exclusion peace.
If investing money could increase the number of idyllic, peaceful lands like Okutama, that seemed like an excellent way to spend a fortune.
I nodded to myself, then grabbed Mamono-kun by the beak and shook him until he came to his senses.
"So, the unprecedented genius wandmaker who earned 81 billion yen from a single wand and contributed to world peace is going back to dismantling the Demon King Gremlin. The rest is up to you."