Chapter 29
Four years had passed since the Gremlin disaster.
It had been two months since the mushroom pandemic.
I could feel the economy, which had been on the upswing, losing steam.
I was still receiving orders for wands from Magic University.
The newly developed Amulets were also well received by the members of the Witches' Gathering, and after the new technology was made public, I received orders from several people through the Blue Witch. Amulets didn't require Dexterity to manufacture, so there was no reason for anyone to commission them from me, but the brand recognition I'd built through selling wands was considerable.
Even if their performance was identical to that of products made by Magic University or ordinary workshops, I was fairly confident in their design. I hadn't studied design for nothing. The mysterious Wandmaker brand was first-rate in both performance and design.
However, the compensation for such commissions had clearly become more meager than it had been before the pandemic.
The value of pre-Gremlin-disaster currency had collapsed long ago, so I mainly received payment in kind for my products: seasonings, foods with long shelf lives, medicine, precious-metal ingots for work or hobbies, and beef and pork, both precious commodities now.
I had even once asked for the continuation of a manga that had been serialized before the disaster. The manga artist's survival was confirmed through the Blue Witch→Eyeball Witch route, and a limited resumption of serialization was approved (the print run was 200 copies and there were four installments, making it roughly the scale of a collaborative doujinshi, but the content lived up to expectations).
Sadly, requests like that became harder to fulfill after the pandemic.
Well, I could understand when the medicine I requested because the pandemic had made me uneasy about my home supplies was politely refused with, "We want to prioritize the people who really need it right now." The punch of that righteous argument was so strong it nearly caved my face in.
But it was a shock that it took more than two weeks for beef and pork to go from request to delivery, sugar's delivery date became unknown, and the number of manga installments published fell from four to three. The people working in the vital livestock industry had also suffered losses, the people responsible for sugar distribution were gone, and one of the manga artists had died.
Even payment for the wands I'd delivered to Magic University was delayed; Professor Ohinata sent me a deeply apologetic letter along with a promissory note for future payment rather than payment in kind.
I came to understand viscerally that this was what it meant for twenty percent of the total population to die.
Society wasn't collapsing outright. But problems were cropping up in every aspect of daily life.
The Amulets hadn't had the effect I'd expected from making the technology public, either.
The Amulet's boost to magic-power recovery was percentage-based rather than a fixed amount. If you had 10,000 magic power, it increased your recovery by 500, but if you had only 1 point of magic power, the increase was just 0.05. For anyone other than witches and wizards with off-the-charts magic power reserves, it was merely an accessory with a truly negligible bonus effect.
The post-pandemic world had no room for such accessories to become widespread. Production had already plummeted. How could anyone spend it on making accessories!? That was the situation. Only witches and wizards wanted them.
Of course, that didn't mean only witches and wizards appreciated them. In fact, the Amulets were among the hottest research topics at the Department of Gremlin Engineering, the Department of Magical Medicine, and the Department of Monster Studies at Magic University.
Magic University somehow completed its organizational restructuring and resumed classes in time for the new students entering in April. It established a new Department of Magical Medicine. Created to consolidate research on mushrooms that had previously been conducted separately throughout Tokyo, gather the reduced number of researchers, and train new personnel, the department surpassed the Department of Magical Linguistics, previously the most competitive department, in its applicant-to-admission ratio during its very first year. That was how strong the sense of crisis the pandemic had given Tokyo's residents was.
The Department of Magical Medicine was researching not only the pathology of mushroom disease, but also the effects of fainting caused by depleted magic power on the human body, as well as countermeasures and preventive measures in case another unknown magical disease spread.
From the Department of Magical Medicine's perspective, the Marble Gremlin used in the Amulet, developed based on mushroom disease, was apparently extremely useful for advancing pathological research.
Needless to say, the Amulets were also highly prized in the Department of Gremlin Engineering. Professor Handa tinkered with them in all sorts of ways alongside his students, and after I sent the physical Amulet and its manufacturing manual through the Blue Witch→Professor Ohinata route, he managed to raise the efficiency of its magic-power recovery boost from 5 percent to 6 percent in just one week.
That guy's incredible, huh...?
Well, the technical abilities required of a craftsman like me, who created the Amulet from nothing, differ from those required of Professor Handa, who only had to improve it. The professor also had students supporting his research, so we weren't working under the same conditions. Still, his ability to improve its performance by 1 percent in just one week was a little frightening. I know because I went through all sorts of trial and error to improve its functions, but performance doesn't improve that easily.
If I hadn't been around, Professor Handa might have become the world's greatest magical-tool craftsman—or at least Japan's.
That said, he'd only raised its performance by 1 percent, so for now, all I could do was look forward to what came next.
I had expected the Amulets to be highly regarded by the Department of Magical Medicine and the Department of Gremlin Engineering, and I was proud of them as their developer, but the discovery made by the Department of Monster Studies was completely unexpected.
The discovery was, in principle, an extension of my own research.
Gremlins that have been melted and resolidified take on a distinctive color based on the blood components mixed into them.
Humans show individual variation in this color, and monsters do as well. Wild animals, however, don't take on any color.
...Or so I thought. But by mobilizing huge numbers of people, the Department of Monster Studies gathered an enormous amount of sample data and uncovered a rule I hadn't been able to reach because I lacked sufficient samples.
They discovered that using blood components from a wild animal with the latent potential to mutate into a monster colored the Gremlin, while blood components from an individual with no potential to mutate did not.
This was a very, very major discovery.
Thanks to this discovery, the agricultural and livestock industries could become dramatically more stable.
A monster is a magical creature formed when an animal mutates. When it mutates, not only its appearance but also its habits and temperament change.
A cow being raised might turn into a monster overnight, destroy its stable, and escape. A docile rabbit might suddenly bare its fangs one day.
The destruction of the large farm in Katsushika Ward was also caused when livestock mutated into monsters in the farm's attached barns, escaped as a group, and devoured the crops from within.
However, the method for testing animals' latent potential to mutate into monsters, discovered by the Department of Monster Studies, made it possible to prevent livestock from suddenly becoming monsters one day. Individuals at risk of becoming monsters could be screened out and culled in advance.
It could be called a revolutionary discovery that would dramatically improve the safety of the livestock industry and massively boost production efficiency.
Just from hearing about it, I could tell that the Amulets I'd sent into the world were being put to good use in the Tokyo Witches' Gathering community, which had suffered deep wounds from the pandemic.
But it wasn't enough.
The Amulets alone couldn't heal all the wounds inflicted by the pandemic.
Naturally, Magic University wasn't the only organization taking various steps to recover from the pandemic.
The Tobacco Witch reluctantly reduced the size of her tobacco fields, securing farmland for producing food whose shortage was once again expected.
In Minato Ward, the central tower within the ward was held at all costs through the unprecedented pandemic without assistance from witches or wizards, and it had become one of the places accepting Tokyo residents left adrift after losing their witch protectors to the pandemic.
The number of ordinary wand workshops continued to grow, and they were streamlining their processing operations and working at full tilt so that wands could spread as quickly as possible.
And helping hands for reconstruction had reached out from beyond Tokyo as well.
One of the five large-scale survivor communities in Japan, each with a population exceeding 100,000, the Tohoku Hunting Association sent personnel to help with the reconstruction.
The Blue Witch would apparently attend the Witches' Gathering in person for the first time in a while, rather than remotely, in order to guard the wizards affiliated with the Tohoku Hunting Association who were being dispatched there, as well as Professor Ohinata, who would be attending the meeting.
Professor Ohinata even sounded me out about attending, though it was a long shot, but naturally, I refused. If attending such a terrifying meeting was the alternative, I'd choose a one-on-one duel with a monster bear.
I decided to wait for the Blue Witch's stories while staying nice and cozy in Okutama.
I had asked the Blue Witch to pitch my wands to the Tohoku Hunting Association, so if all went well, awareness of and regard for my work would rise even further, and I'd gain more customers.
I was looking forward to it.