Chapter 134
Hiyori succeeded in reproducing translation magic three days after I added a four-dimensional storage function to Kyanos. According to Hiyori, it had "become a little misshapen," and she was reproducing translation magic by layering three types of silent magic on top of one another.
It should have been possible with a single silent spell, but apparently she was frustrated that she had to split it into three. I don't really understand it, but if she managed to reproduce it, that's good enough, right? Plenty good enough!
"Hiyori, that's amazing!"
"...Pet me more."
When I patted her head and praised her, Hiyori pressed her face insistently against my chest. Oh, I thought she wanted me to say she was amazing, but apparently she wanted to be called cute. She was a good girl, too. It looked like all three sisters' epithets had come from their mother.
After petting the exhausted Hiyori all over following her major achievement and spending the night doing this and that, we ended our stay of over a month and departed Busan.
Busan-Seoul-Pyongyang was connected by steam-powered railways, so from here on, we'd be traveling by train. It would take about twelve hours from the True Korean Republic's port, through its capital, to North Korea's old capital.
Fast in some ways, slow in others.
Compared with the airplanes and bullet trains of the previous era, it was slow. But compared with the days right after the Gremlin Disaster, when people relied on bicycles and courier runners to carry messages, it was almost too fast. Dragon Post and return magic could exceed some of the transportation speeds of 2024, but those options were limited to the wealthy and powerful. They weren't something ordinary people could casually use.
While waiting for the train on the disorderly station platform, I brought up the subject with Hiyori, and she shrugged.
"Even this is better than it was a while ago. Tiger Beasts have become widespread, and cities are connected by locomotives. It's convenient."
"But you'd be faster if you ran, Hiyori."
"Would you run all the way to Pyongyang? Assuming you had enough magic power."
"...No. That sounds exhausting. I don't want to run for twelve hours."
"Exactly."
I was convinced. Even if we could travel faster, a train journey had its merits. It was easy, for one thing. We wouldn't get lost, either.
The train bound for Pyongyang arrived three minutes behind schedule. Unlike Japan's black-painted trains, Korean steam locomotives were white. The fact that they were painted completely white and plastered with advertisements was rather amusing. The entire train was covered in ads.
Translation magic didn't work on written text, so I couldn't read the Korean advertisements. But with the illustrations, I could generally tell what they were advertising. There seemed to be a lot of recruitment ads for pioneer groups and workers at magic-beast ranches. There were also a few cosmetics ads. The demand in that area wasn't much different from Japan's.
And then there was Hatobato-san's wanted poster, inconspicuously pasted up here and there. Better luck next time, Hatobato-san. I hope you're alive when we meet again. I want to show off my four-dimensional storage function, after all.
Hiyori had booked a first-class compartment, and we had the private room with its spacious, fluffy sofa all to ourselves. I examined the compartment while sucking on the candies packed into a basket on the side table, but there was nothing particularly interesting. I only noticed that dust had accumulated beneath the sofa and thought, They really don't bother cleaning places people can't see.
And then I noticed Hiyori sitting elegantly on the sofa, flipping through a catalog.
She beckoned me over, and when I sat beside her, she showed me the catalog. As the train began moving slowly, Hiyori explained.
"It's a catalog for things sold aboard the train. First-class compartments like this usually have one. Pull that cord to ring the bell, and an attendant will come."
"Oh, that cord wasn't just decoration. I think I saw one on passenger ships, too. If that's what it was, you could've told me... Though even if you had, I suppose it wouldn't have mattered."
Calling over a stranger for no reason was out of the question. It was a feature I would never use anyway. Knowing or not knowing made no difference.
The catalog was interesting even if I had no intention of buying anything. We looked through it together for a while, but everything in it was something we'd seen or bought during our month in Korea, so I quickly got bored. Almost all of our Korean souvenirs had already been mailed to Japan. By now, Mokutan was probably happily tearing the wrapping paper off them in Okutama.
While we were looking through the catalog, the train left the urban area, passed through the mountains, and entered another urban area. We saw the peaceful sight of tiger beasts lounging and playing together at a magic-beast ranch, as well as squalid districts lined with ramshackle shacks.
Japan also had a difference in development between the countryside and the cities, but the gap in Korea looked even greater. It seemed it would be quite a while before the vitality of the cities reached the countryside.
Eventually, I grew tired of the scenery and pulled out the Korean souvenir I hadn't mailed to Japan, fiddling with it in my hands. At first glance, it was nothing more than a glass hexagonal prism, but after I touched it for a while, it gradually turned a soft gold. It was fascinating.
This fortune-telling tool used for Korean magic-stone divination was what was known as a "Magia Glass."
When Gremlin-treated intermediate iron, a substance one step short of becoming magic metal, glass, and Gremlins were mixed in suitable proportions and heated, they melted and combined at a temperature lower than their normal melting point.
That mixture was slowly cooled and solidified into a hexagonal prism, creating a Magia Glass.
A Magia Glass could be used to determine a person's innate magic color. When I touched it, it turned gold, the color of my magic power. When Hiyori touched it, it turned blue.
In that it changed color in response to magic power, it was somewhat like a magic ruler. But it couldn't measure the amount of magic power. It only revealed a person's innate color.
Eighty years ago, if you wanted to find out your own innate magic color, you had to use magic that reflected it, such as an eyeball familiar, or mix your blood with molten Gremlins.
Compared with those methods, the Magia Glass made it much easier to find out your innate color. It was convenient.
It was convenient, but that didn't mean anything would actually come of it.
It was like a horoscope. Knowing your innate magic color had no practical value. It was simply interesting and made you feel a little more excited.
Hiyori also declared, "Magia Glass fortune-telling is interesting, but it has no basis." If a witch said it, it had to be true.
For fun, I tried fortune-telling with a laughably sloppy Japanese translation guide for tourists from Japan in one hand and the Magia Glass in the other.
The page titled "Compatibility Fortune" said, "Check your colors to see how compatible you are with the person you like!"
So, mine was gold. Hiyori's was blue.
The compatibility between gold and blue was...
"Hiyori, Hiyori! It says people with gold and blue magic colors are a great match! I knew it!"
When I shook her shoulder and told her, Hiyori shifted her gaze from the catalog to the fortune-telling book and let out a soft laugh.
"Of course. I won't allow us to be incompatible."
"O-oh. So this is a matter of what you'll allow...?"
Even though I knew there was no basis for believing it and that the book was just making things up, I still felt a little excited.
I see. I'd always thought fortune-telling was a scam, but it was probably like enjoying fictional manga or anime. If something made-up was entertaining, who cared?
But as I read further, I realized that gold had simply been assigned the position of being moderately compatible with every color, and my excitement dipped a little. What the hell? Was I the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type? Don't underestimate me. I'm versatile and good at everything.
Blue, meanwhile, was described as follows: "You possess many hidden talents. You will grow close to someone drawn to your inner radiance."
Hmm. The Barnum effect. They were presenting vague traits that applied to anyone as though they were individual characteristics. Humanity had acquired real magic, yet it hadn't progressed an inch beyond horoscopes and blood-type fortune-telling.
They should learn from future-seeing magic. That stuff was the real deal. Or could the existence of genuine magic actually be making people think that even these mountains of lies might be real?
All right, wealth fortune-telling. Your financial luck can be determined by your color. Gold is... a tycoon! The best of all the colors. You have incredible financial luck. What a lousy translation. Gold means money, so it determines financial luck? How obvious.
"Lifespan fortune-telling. You can learn your lifespan. Place your palms against the top and bottom of the hexagonal prism and watch where the colors seeping upward and downward meet. If they meet in the middle, your lifespan is average. The higher up they collide, the longer you'll live. Huh. I see."
"..."
When I tried the lifespan fortune-telling, gold shot upward from the bottom the instant I began. The result said I would live an impossibly long time, which made sense, but the movement was so blatantly strange that I looked over at Hiyori. She was gripping Kyanos and pointedly looking away.
"Hey. You tampered with my fortune just now, didn't you?"
"I'll make you live a long time. No problem."
"Don't forcibly twist fortune-telling..."
"What, have you gotten hooked on fortune-telling? You were saying things like you didn't like it."
Hiyori closed the catalog and showed an interest in the fortune-telling as well, so the two of us amused ourselves with it.
"Okay, fortunes for two. This one. Future fortune-telling: glimpse what awaits the two of you in the future."
"The two of us place our hands on the Magia Glass. Observe what shape appears when our magic colors mix... Hey, stop cheating. You controlled your magic power, didn't you? There's no way a heart could appear this clearly."
"Didn't you learn from picture books that witches are good at fortune-telling?"
"I did, but..."
After that, no matter what we tried to predict, Hiyori forcibly steered the result toward whatever she wanted, and eventually I burst out laughing. In the hands of the Blue Witch, even fate itself might kneel and be twisted to her will. She was strong.
While the two of us ate the boxed meals we'd bought at the station before leaving Busan and tried one kind of fortune-telling after another, the train passed Seoul and continued farther and farther north.
Once we reached the terminus, Pyongyang, we would transfer to another line and continue north to the border.
The next country we'd enter after the True Korean Republic was China.
I hoped China's economic powerhouse, the Wuxian Group, wouldn't hold a grudge against 0933. They'd spent 81 billion yen to win the Golden Rule Jade Staff at auction because they wanted its silent-magic mechanism, and now a plan to release all the information on Demon King Gremlin was progressing behind the scenes.
If information about Demon King Gremlin was made public around the world, the Wuxian Group's technological advantage, which it had paid so dearly to obtain, would be undermined in about a year. We hadn't violated our contract, but they probably wouldn't be pleased.
While we were in China, perhaps I should send the Wuxian Group some sort of apology gift...