Chapter 147
I wanted the scepter that would symbolize the new Stuart royal family being established in the Chengdu Concession to have truly unparalleled capabilities.
I turned the important core components—the eye-catching features—into black boxes, while outsourcing the mathematical calculations necessary for manufacturing. I'm the world champion of dexterity, but my brains are only so-so. Complex calculations concerning four-dimensional space that make your brain boil are best left to people who specialize in that sort of thing.
All I do is set up the equations, leave the theorem proofs entirely to someone else, or hand over the data and have them create the formulas for me.
Scholars think, and I build. That's the best way to do things.
As construction of the scepter entered its final stages, we moved from the inn to the guesthouse at the Stuart residence.
Once I had finalized the design, I presented the projected specifications for what it would be if completed according to the theory, and the other side designated the project a state secret. It was no longer something we could work on in a room at a privately run inn.
Things were getting more and more serious.
The calculations I needed for the scepter were being done by Chengdu University, but before I knew it, that had become a top-secret project too.
We had moved beyond the theoretical stage and begun making prototypes for practical testing. When I tried to outsource the manufacture of simple components that didn't require my personal skills, the Stuart family's in-house craftsmen came rushing in.
Those craftsmen were responsible for the remaining two of the three Regalia that guaranteed the throne: the crown and the ring.
Apparently, they were extremely bitter about the scepter being made by foreign craftsmen, so they were pushing the limits of their abilities to increase the proportion of domestically made components, at the very least. They were also enthusiastically learning and applying four-dimensional theory.
Well, four-dimensional technology could become an extremely powerful weapon if mastered, and it had the potential to bring about enormous advances in technology across the board.
Any technician who wasn't interested in this was a third-rate hack at best. As a fellow craftsman, I understood how they felt.
But even with every possible concession, the components you made are barely good enough to use in a prototype. They don't have the precision required for the finished product, so don't get too uppity!
I was busy making the prototype, but Hiyori and Tsubaki were both quite busy themselves.
Hiyori was acting as a buffer between me and the people handling the calculations and outsourced component manufacturing, while also keeping an eye out for industrial spies.
She was also keeping watch over Ainsell-jō by placing a golem beside her, and conducting performance tests on the prototype.
She was carefully disposing of the prototype scepters and even cooking home-style meals for us every day. She was the very picture of a devoted caretaker.
A kind, cute, beautiful, single-minded, devoted woman supporting me in both my public and private life wasn't merely a virgin's fantasy after all. Though the way we first met, with our lives hanging in the balance, really had been like a chuunibyou patient's fantasy.
Tsubaki was just as busy as Hiyori, if not more so.
At her request, I had installed a nonverbal-casting mechanism in Salamandra, and she was practicing the basics of nonverbal magic with it.
She was also having elegant tea parties with Ainsell-sama and the finest extra-virgin olive oil produced in Lazio.
She went for walks, took naps, and walked across the carpet with ash-covered bare feet, troubling the cleaning maids. She was extremely busy.
Each of us had our own kind of busywork. Everyone had it tough.
In the end, the entire scepter project took a full two months. It had been summer when we began, but now autumn was already in the air.
The main reason construction had dragged on was that the team helping me was underpowered. I felt bad saying that after receiving their assistance, but I had been forced to realize that Chengdu really was small.
If this had been Japan, the cooperation of Tokyo Magic University, with its manpower and abundance of excellent talent, would have cut the time in half.
Chengdu had talent too. It did, but it had fewer people, and none of them were as elite as those in Japan.
If all they had were utterly worthless good-for-nothings, we wouldn't have been able to complete the scepter in the first place, so I supposed they had earned a barely passing grade. I wouldn't complain.
Still, maintaining independence while caught between Britain and China with talent of this level was going to be difficult.
For at least the next dozen years or so, they would probably have to struggle while keeping their heads down.
That was probably why they wanted to put a veneer of prestige on the scepter, to make things even a little easier. Politics was a difficult business.
"...So, is it finished?"
"It is. I've named it Scepter Beifan!"
In a room of the guesthouse that had been transformed into a workshop, I raised the completed scepter and showed it to Hiyori.
Though calling it “naming” was a bit misleading. As for the inscription, the client, Arthur-shi, had made an emotionally weighty request that I name it after his wife, so I had simply done as he asked.
Scepter Beifan's appearance follows that of a traditional Western-style scepter, as befits a Regalia.
In other words, it has a straight shaft, crowned at the tip by a core modeled after a glittering crown.
The component installed inside this unmistakably scepter-like core is one of the central functions of the Regalia.
Successor Identification Function.
A composite mechanism combining the Firekeeper's Wand principle mechanism installed inside the crown with Iatros Glass identifies the late Beifan-san's Gremlin and the unique-color Gremlin belonging to Arthur-shi. The scepter is designed to unlock its functions only in response to the magical power of the two of them and their descendants.
Apparently, the Stuart family's craftsmen were utterly worn out by the data collection required to realize this system. I had them test around three thousand patterns, after all. It couldn't be helped.
But they should be grateful that I had used my intuition and experience to narrow the original hundred thousand or so possibilities down to three thousand.
The other core function of the Regalia guarantees the scepter's prestige as a complete piece of overtechnology.
Magical Power Storage Function.
This is a mechanism combining four-dimensional technology with a reduction mechanism, a technology branched off from the magical reverse-flow prevention mechanism.
When magical power is fed through the magical power measuring device in the grip of the shaft, the wand stores and preserves it in four-dimensional space.
Put simply, it has an external magical power tank.
According to its catalog specifications, it can store just under 8,000K of magical power!
It's an excellent device that stores magical power your own body can't hold in your place!
It was an absurdly powerful feature, right on the verge of being over-specced, one I had agonized over releasing to the world because Hiyori was simply too exceptional!
With Scepter Beifan in hand, even Arthur-shi and Ainsell-jō, who had only 20K of magical power, could use a grand spell consuming 8,000K of magical power! They'd lose control of it, go berserk, and die, of course!
Even so, being able to say, “Take this great magical power I've stored up for a year!” was incredibly cool. And even without doing something so flashy, the fact that an ordinary human who wasn't even a demon could cast healing magic a hundred times in a row was honestly and genuinely powerful.
You store magical power during peacetime and unleash it all at once in an emergency. This was a wand whose true value emerged only when its wielder kept holding onto it and steadily building up a reserve of magical power.
Also, the black-boxed magical power storage function used liquid Gremlin derived from Demon King Gremlin, delivered from Japan through a reliable transport route in the Flower Witch Tribe's network. So, as requested, I think it would retain its prestige without becoming obsolete for roughly a hundred years.
After all, nobody knows how to make liquid Gremlin! If I used a material whose manufacturing process nobody knew and made it into a structure only I could produce, there was no doubt that the secret of its manufacture would be protected.
Since I had added the same function to Cureanos, the entire stock of liquid Gremlin harvested from Demon King Gremlin had been used up.
【Successor Identification Function】
【Magical Power Storage Function】
【Magical Power Measurement Function】
With these three functions, its “class” as a Regalia ought to be more than sufficient.
I will accept complaints, but I hope you understand that I'd be hard-pressed to meet demands for any higher specifications than this.
And so, Scepter Beifan was complete.
All that remained was to deliver it to the client, but Hiyori let out a deep, exhausted sigh, so I set about taking care of her.
"Good work, Hiyori. Thanks for everything. We finished it thanks to you."
"Mm. I want to say this was nothing, but honestly, it was mentally exhausting. Those in-house craftsmen kept pestering me to let them meet Oori and deal with him directly. They just wouldn't stop."
"Damn. It got that bad? If I'd had to deal with them directly, I'd have been vomiting stomach acid."
The sales representative who had handled that terrifyingly stressful interpersonal work really did look pale from the strain, so I gently laid her on the bed, removed her clothes, and began giving her a massage.
We could make the delivery at any time. Taking care of the woman who had worked so hard for us took priority.
"Wha—!? W-wait, wait. I haven't even showered, and it's broad daylight..."
"My, my, you've got some serious knots here. All right, lie facedown. I'll start working them out from the top."
"...Oh. That's what you meant. No, thank you. Was it my fault for getting my hopes up?"
Hiyori muttered under her breath, but she obediently entrusted herself to me. Before long, the tension left her body and she melted into a boneless puddle.
Hiyori looked human, but she had no heart, her deep body temperature was below freezing, and her internal structure was completely different from a human's. Even so, I knew her body inside and out. I knew every single pressure point that made Hiyori happy. Fuhahahaha!
After taking my time and pampering Hiyori to the point of turning her into a puddle at the finest Oori-style spa and beauty salon, the limp Hiyori raised her head as if she had noticed something.
Suddenly, we heard angry shouts and screams loud enough to pierce the room's soundproofing.
Then something that was neither an impact nor a wave, but a strange phenomenon that made the air itself seem to warp, tore through the guesthouse, and before long the entire place erupted in a tremendous commotion, as if someone had kicked a hornet's nest.
"Wha—what the hell was that!?"
"I don't know! Get dressed—quickly!"
Hiyori quickly put on the clothes I tossed her, picked me up, kicked through the window, and escaped outside the guesthouse.
We tumbled out into the front garden, where we immediately saw the whole situation.
The detached quarters where the servants and in-house craftsmen lived had been gouged out and had vanished.
Not only the surface but the ground itself had been gouged out, exposing drainage pipes from which water was gushing.
It hadn't been destroyed. It had vanished.
From the shocking traces of a cleanly vanished square roughly twenty meters on each side, I understood what had happened and groaned.
"You idiots...! You used four-dimensional technology outside the designated area, didn't you? I sent it to you with warnings all over it!"
"A four-dimensional accident!? I expressly ordered you not to tamper with it when I wasn't supervising you!"
As Hiyori and I held our heads over the catastrophe the in-house craftsmen had caused, a blonde girl who had collapsed just outside the edge of the vanished area came to her senses and began crying out.
"This is freaking bad! Father, Roderick-sama, Yvette! It's terrible! Arrange rescue and medical teams! Ah!? Blue Witch-sama! You arrived at the perfect time! Please help us!"
"!? Ah, yes, that's right. Ainsell! Get back to the mansion immediately! There could be secondary disasters! We'll provide the manpower here! A beautiful rebellious phase has come to the eldest daughter, and an army of stone has joined beneath the king's banner."
Hiyori reached inside her clothes and pulled out four large Gremlins held between her fingers.
She chanted while throwing the Gremlins, and four one-eyed golems appeared, each with one of the four Gremlins as its core.
"Rescue them. Human lives take priority."
Goh. Goh. Goh. Goh.
Responding to Hiyori's command with grinding voices, the four golems ran toward the quarters, most of which had been gouged away, leaving the remaining section tottering on the verge of collapse.
As people from the mansion gathered from all around and watched fearfully from a distance, the fearless golems carried out those who had luckily escaped being caught in the disaster.
Hiyori watched them with a grim expression.
"Oori, can you bring back what vanished?"
"No. If it vanished this way, I can't bring it back. Wait... If I reverse-engineer it from the manner of its disappearance... No, it's impossible. Trying to force it back would only cause an even worse accident."
I had known there was a risk of an accident.
That's why I had operated it in a way that would prevent accidents, and issued countless warnings to ensure that nobody used it incorrectly.
Even so, an accident had occurred.
It was a man-made disaster.
It was unbearably futile and hollow.
I knew the craftsmen had been spurred on by the desire to catch up to and surpass my technology.
Had their eagerness to research and hone their skills driven them to try something they shouldn't have? Enthusiasm strong enough to break through every restraint was terrifying.
If Hiyori hadn't kept nagging me, I might have caused an accident like this somewhere along the way and died instantly. The thought sent a chill down my spine.
Before our eyes, the unstable remains of the quarters tilted and collapsed.
Amid terrible clouds of dust and screams, the four-dimensional accident reached a temporary conclusion.
Half a day after the four-dimensional accident occurred, the victims and extent of the damage had been confirmed.
Three mathematicians, two craftsmen, and thirteen servants: eighteen people erased by four-dimensional banishment, effectively dead.
The servants' quarters were completely destroyed.
The research materials on four-dimensional technology had vanished.
It was a massive disaster.
Taking the situation extremely seriously, Arthur-shi decided to prohibit four-dimensional technology research in principle, at least within his domain.
It was designated forbidden magic.
From that point onward, anyone who researched four-dimensional technology without permission would be subject to severe punishment.
It was only natural. We had known it was dangerous, but now that danger had been proven through actual harm.
There was even a discussion about removing the four-dimensional mechanisms from Scepter Beifan, which used four-dimensional technology, and rebuilding it.
However, the testimony of the craftsmen who had escaped the disaster, my guarantee that using the scepter would not cause a similar accident, and a private conversation Hiyori held while thinking it over grimly led to the decision not to modify the scepter and to proceed with the delivery as it was.
It was a thoroughly unpleasant ending.
The scepter had turned out at 120% quality, but an accident like this had happened.
No matter how carefully Hiyori and I warned everyone and emphasized the need to prevent accidents, an accident had still occurred.
Once the wand was delivered, my work was over.
There was no reason for me to remain there.
Even though we had just finished a major job, an awkward, oppressive atmosphere drove us out, and Hiyori, wearing a grim expression, pulled Tsubaki and me out of Chengdu.
We rode on the back of a tiger along the road.
Tsubaki had no idea what had happened, but even she was affected by the gloomy mood hanging over Hiyori and me, and wore a solemn expression.
We traveled for several hours in heavy silence without anyone saying a word.
"Well, then."
Eventually, after we entered the mountains and Chengdu disappeared from view, Hiyori opened her mouth.
After dismounting from the tiger, Hiyori spoke in a gentle, warm voice, while her eyes were cold enough to send a chill through me.
"I'm going to kill the mastermind. You two wait here."