Witch Hat

Actually, the idea of using headgear to defend against magic-power sealing isn't all that far-fetched.

Quodenets is shaped like a wand.

Some magic can summon and enhance weapons.

Even for the people of the magic civilization, who seem capable of doing anything with magic, equipment must surely be important.

Mr. Hatobato wore a hat too. Perhaps it had some kind of magical effect as well?

Then again, it might have been nothing more than vanity and eccentricity. He did spend his time in Korea wolfing down chicken and kimchi and enjoying himself.

In exchange for providing Kinrenka with magic-power-sealing protection equipment as well, I promised to give her full support with equipment development.

At a single word from Kinrenka, related materials and the supplies needed for experiments were rapidly gathered from research institutions throughout Wuhan, and I immediately began development at the inn. Hiyori took Tsubaki shopping to keep her from climbing onto my head and lap and getting in the way.

The foundation would be the mycelial structure of the Pandemic Mushroom.

The Pandemic Mushroom that had caused enormous damage in Japan put down roots inside people when it infected them and drained their magic power. When the disease became severe, it accessed the invisible magic organ in the head and made magic-power manipulation impossible.

In principle, it should be the closest thing to magic-power sealing. The Marble Gremlin used in amulets was originally derived from the Pandemic Mushroom, so that might be related too.

First, I separated and organized the mushroom specimens and mycelial-structure sketches ordered from a university in Wuhan into layers using translucent tracing paper.

I organized the magnetic-field line diagrams for the magnetic force used in magic-power training the same way.

Then I spent an entire day comparing the two and trying to identify their common points, but it didn't work at all.

Well, both the Pandemic Mushroom and magic-power training are important research subjects. If they were this easy to figure out, someone would have discovered it long ago.

My special skill is "Dexterity." All I can do is make use of it and keep attacking the problem.

The mushroom drew up magic power through its mycelium. If so, mycelium must be a material that magic power travels through easily.

I asked Kinrenka to make as many types of plant fibers resembling the composition of mycelium as she could think of, then wove the fibers together to recreate the mushroom's mycelial structure.

Kinrenka was appalled when she saw the mycelial-structure model I'd woven at absurd speed.

"How disgusting...!"

"Do you hate fungi? Well, you do use essential oils to exterminate insects and mushrooms."

"Ah, I've given you the wrong idea. It's Dairi's hand movements that are disgusting. What is that? I mean, that's not something a human being should be capable of."

"Fuhahahaha! I am a human precision machine!"

I didn't mind being praised.

Humming to myself, I made models of several different mycelial structures, ran magic power through them, and had Kinrenka check the flow.

But once again, it was a dud. I'd prepared fifty patterns while adjusting the details, yet none of them produced any notable reaction.

"Hmm? So I really do need to incorporate a Marble Gremlin? The theory that the structure won't work unless a Marble Gremlin is used as the core might be valid. If it has to be a living Pandemic Mushroom, that will be difficult, but... I might as well try it."

"I understand now. Dairi can immediately turn ideas into reality and test them, and his pace of trial and error is abnormally fast. If he can use his dexterity to finish in one day a project that a research institute would schedule and carry out over an entire year, then naturally he can invent new technology at an equally rapid pace."

"In other words, I'm a genius."

"Yes. Put simply."

"I've revised my opinion of you," Kinrenka said with a slight smile.

Does that mean she'd been looking down on me until now? That's not something I could let slide... Actually, maybe I could let it slide. I wasn't the kind of person people took to immediately after meeting me. This was a perfectly normal reaction.

Development proceeded slowly over the course of several weeks.

Along the way, I asked Tsubaki and Hiyori, our resident magic-power-sealing experts, for their opinions on the mechanism while piling up mountains of prototypes.

Tsubaki had inherited excellent magic-power control from her mother, and she had been practicing longer than Hiyori, so she had mastered magic-power sealing.

While Hiyori had Tsubaki demonstrate it over and over and was gradually approaching mastery, Kinrenka gave up almost immediately.

Apparently, it was "too difficult."

That didn't make much sense either.

When Mr. Hatobato learned that Hiyori couldn't use magic-power sealing, he said, "The progress of your technology is all out of sync."

That meant that, from Mr. Hatobato's perspective, Earth's magic technology had already reached a level at which magic-power sealing should have been possible. It shouldn't have been so extremely difficult.

But in reality, even Hiyori and Tsubaki, elite magic-power manipulators, couldn't master it without making a considerable effort. It was difficult enough that Kinrenka, who had only ordinary manipulation ability, gave up on learning it.

We must be overlooking something.

The magic civilization probably has plenty of technologies that Earth civilization lacks.

Earth's magic technology developed by working backward from extremely advanced techniques such as incantation magic and Demon King Gremlin, so it was only natural for its technological development to become distorted.

But Earth civilization has technologies derived from electrical technology that the magic civilization doesn't have! Don't underestimate us!

With the full cooperation of everyone concerned combined with my policy of making prototype after prototype and collecting data, development moved forward at a furious pace.

By the time we passed prototype number 900, the magic-power-sealing protection equipment had more or less taken shape.

First, I wove a hat from the plant fibers Kinrenka had provided.

I embroidered the hat with Hollow Silver metal thread, using the mycelium of the Pandemic Mushroom as a reference.

The original pattern for this embroidery was the mushroom's mycelium, but when I looked at it in its finished form, its structure resembled a neural network in the brain. Hiyori described it as "a sea of stars in the universe."

At the points where those mysterious embroidered metal-wire structures gathered, I fitted the core of a Marble Gremlin made using Hiyori's blood—the blood of the person who would wear the protective equipment.

Prototypes 700 through 800 had turned into cursed equipment that caused headaches and nausea when worn, but I solved that problem by referring to the magnetic structure used in magic-power training.

The theory once discovered by the Department of Mutations at Tokyo Magic University at the cost of countless lives proved immensely useful for defending against magic-power sealing, even across the passage of time.

Hiyori sat in the inn's armchair wearing prototype 912. After closing her eyes for a while, she signaled to Tsubaki with her hand. Tsubaki nodded and thrust one hand toward Hiyori with gusto.

"Mimimii—! ... Mimi? M-M-Mimi!"

Tsubaki's face turned bright red as she groaned and strained, glaring at Hiyori with all the force in her eyes.

But Hiyori remained seated in the chair, looking perfectly relaxed.

Oh? Is it working? Could it really work?

Prototypes 900 through 911 had been too weakly defended and were pierced through.

How about this time? What do you say, Tsubaki-san?

"M-Mimi! I give up. No good. Magic-power sealing doesn't work."

Tsubaki kept trying to break through the defense for a while, but eventually gave up and threw both hands in the air.

I threw my hands in the air too and high-fived Tsubaki.

If Tsubaki couldn't break through it, then Hiyori, who had only just learned magic-power sealing, wouldn't be able to either. I couldn't say what would happen against Mr. Hatobato, but it was safe to call this finished.

"All right! A month to finish it... That took a while."

"No, no, that was short."

"But I made the first version of Kyanos in a week, you know?"

"Then it was long...? No, of course it wasn't. Talking to you destroys my sense of normalcy. Honestly, you..."

The witch hat I'd made for Hiyori was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself.

It was a black triangular hat with a broad brim and a bent tip, simply decorated with one large Marble Gremlin and three smaller Marble Gremlins nestled beside it. Though, strictly speaking, they weren't decoration at all; they were vital components absolutely necessary for the hat's effect.

The hat and the choker around her neck were designed to pull toward each other so it wouldn't come off during battle. I had combined a Sierpinski icosahedron with a Kvant-style chain structure to accomplish that.

The corresponding components built into the hat and choker attracted each other like magnets, ensuring that the hat wouldn't easily come off as long as magic power was flowing.

It would have been overwhelmingly easier to make it a simple circlet instead of going to all this trouble, but I wanted to see Hiyori in a witch hat, so I couldn't help myself. It had been worth adding all those troublesome contrivances.

Behold!

Behold Hiyori in her complete form!

In her left hand, she held the Dragon-Furnace-Engraved Seven-Layer Blue Magic Wand, Kyanos!

A seven-layer magic-amplification structure, the latest no-incantation mechanism, and a core specially treated to accept only Hiyori's magic power!

Built into the grip was the latest high-efficiency anti-magic-backflow mechanism. It even had a magic-power meter, a useful feature that showed how much magic power remained!

The Kvant-style magical compression intersecting rings surrounding the core would, when activated, compress magic, making it sharper, smaller, and more tightly focused!

The emergency-defense mechanism in the attachment also deserved special mention. With a single touch, it could deploy extremely powerful, short-duration protection in every direction.

The gear on the grip was the trigger for four-dimensional storage. If you put your finger through the gear's ring and infused it with magic power, the wand would be stored in four-dimensional space in an instant, and the gear would become a ring.

A magic wand packed with the latest and greatest features was worthy of being wielded by the strongest witch.

On the ring finger of the left hand holding Kyanos was the engagement ring I'd given her!

It was made of platinum and had absolutely no magical effect!

But I knew that Hiyori sometimes gazed at the ring and grinned to herself.

It was kind of embarrassing.

Her outfit was a robe in the Spider Witch design, remade before we left Japan and sewn by me!

It was made from fabric woven of Spider Witch's spider silk interlaced with Steel Sheep wool. The robe was heat-resistant and durable. It was resistant to magic as well. It resisted dirt, hardly wrinkled, was lightweight, and didn't fade easily. It was a dependable, high-end brand that had remained unchanged for eighty years.

There were more heavily armored options, but she couldn't exactly wear rigid, heavy armor every day. I believed this was the best of the best as a witch's everyday outfit.

Shimmering at the witch's chest was a snow-crystal-shaped amulet!

Thanks to the tireless advances made by the researchers, it provided a 25% increase to magic-power recovery speed.

Together with the magic recovery potion tucked into her clothes, it improved the witch's ability to keep fighting.

A healing magic scroll in her pocket!

This was important too. Though it seemed to be more for my use than hers.

Even if she had been hit by magic-power sealing or suffered massive damage in a surprise attack, as long as she was alive, she could pull out the scroll, give it a tap, and recover completely. It must have been a nightmare for her enemies.

And finally, the grand finale—the witch hat, newly added today!

It completely blocked even ridiculously powerful magic-power sealing. And it looked good too.

Magic wand.

Ring.

Robe.

Amulet.

Scroll.

Witch hat.

Loaded down with magic items from head to toe, Hiyori looked like a witch straight out of an incredibly clichéd picture book.

Perfect. The strongest both inside and out.

"Hiyori, Hiyori."

"Hmm?"

"It suits you incredibly well. Perfect."

When I gave her a thumbs-up and my seal of approval, Hiyori lowered the brim of her witch hat and shyly hid her eyes.

Whoa, she's so cute! So cute!

While I was getting excited, Tsubaki poked me in the back, her eyes sparkling as she began begging.

"Mimi. Me too, me too. I want one of those too."

"Oh? Sure. You've helped a lot, after all. I'll make you the best hat there is."

"No. That. The thing around her neck."

"Oh, the choker? Since we're at it, how about a collar?"

"Mimimi, a collar. Put a collar on me."

Looking back, if Tsubaki had been wearing a proper collar, Mr. Hatobato would have realized that she was a properly kept Fire Lizard rather than a stray one.

It was like putting a collar on a pet cat to show everyone that it wasn't a stray.

If a second or third person from the magic civilization appeared, she might be mistaken for a stray Fire Lizard and killed this time.

A collar was necessary. Tsubaki was our precious pet. Keep your hands off her.

"Hey, wait. You're putting a collar on Tsubaki?"

While I was asking Tsubaki what kind of collar she wanted, Hiyori stopped fidgeting, turned serious, and cut in.

Maybe I was imagining it, but she seemed a little put off. Why?

"Of course she needs a collar. It'd be a problem if some person from the magic civilization mistook her for a stray Fire Lizard and exterminated her again."

"Mimimi. I want to dress up too. I want Oori to dress me up."

"Ugh... No, listen. Tsubaki, how about a different accessory? A hat, maybe. Or a necklace. A collar is... with the way you look, having you wear one and walk behind Dairi would look, well, bad."

"Don't worry. I'll put a leash on you too."

"You're putting a leash on her too!?"

Even though I'd said something perfectly reasonable, Hiyori was aghast and utterly appalled.

Tsubaki and I looked at each other and tilted our heads.

I had no idea why Hiyori was so upset.

Except in Okutama, where the entire area was private property, letting a pet run loose in the city was dangerous. If you were walking a pet around town, putting a collar on it, holding the leash, and not letting go was only natural... wasn't it?

"Is there something wrong with putting a collar on Tsubaki? I think not putting one on is worse. What is going on?"

"The Blue Witch is cheating. I want to dress up too. I want a collar. Why can't I have a collar?"

When the two of us asked her, Hiyori clutched her head and became utterly lost.

"Am I the only one with any normal sensibilities? Help me, Spider Witch..."

I didn't really understand, but apparently we were the weird ones.

After I kept asking why it was forbidden, Hiyori reluctantly held an emergency family meeting and awkwardly explained why it was a bad idea.

Tsubaki remained bewildered even after hearing the reason, but I understood.

I see. I really didn't want to be mistaken for some depraved pervert who put a collar on a middle-school girl and paraded her around.

Sorry, Tsubaki. Let me give you a different fashion accessory instead.