Chapter 44
The hospitalization that began with appendicitis ended after six days.
After having my stitches removed, I returned to Okutama with Hiyori accompanying me, only to be greeted by furious fire lizards.
Apparently, they had turned over every shelf and every closet in the house while searching for food, which had begun to run short. All the ash had been raked out of the workshop furnace and the kitchen hearth and scattered everywhere, leaving the house a complete mess. They had done whatever they pleased. There were even signs that they had melted the warehouse shutter with their flames, broken in, and wandered around inside.
It would've been nice if I could have left their care to Hiyori, but they aren't attached to her, so trying to take care of them probably would've had the opposite effect.
The three fire lizards had been sleeping soundly inside the charcoal basket in the earthen-floored kitchen, their swollen bellies exposed. When they saw me, they mewed angrily and bit my fingers a little harder.
"Sorry for abandoning you out of nowhere!"
"But it was hard for me too! Forgive me."
The fire lizards continued to vent their anger by letting sparks leak from their mouths, but once I took out a toothbrush and started scrubbing their bodies, caked with ash, dust, and dried mud, they wagged their tails and cheered up.
"There, there, you adorable little things." Having to clean up the house while I was still recovering was a headache, but the fire lizards were still babies who hadn't even reached one year old. I couldn't bring myself to get angry with them.
If anything, I was relieved that the worst-case scenario I had imagined—that I would return to find the house completely burned down—hadn't come true.
The doctor had told me to avoid strenuous exercise and not overexert myself for a month, so for the time being, I declined visits from Hiyori and Professor Ohinata. No visitors allowed.
Having fun with friends is enjoyable, but it wears me out. Being alone is the easiest.
The two of them understood that perfectly well, and kept in touch through eyeball familiars and pouch sparrows. Hiyori had ended up keeping two of them, after all.
While I lazily cleaned the house, sorted seed rice, and raised seedlings, all sorts of things continued to progress. I passed the time reading the letters the two of them sent me regularly in place of a newspaper, put wand manufacturing on hold for a while, and devoted the early spring to a leisurely recuperation.
Apparently, the circulation of the new currency that had begun at the start of the year was going smoothly.
There had been some problems, such as long lines forming to exchange ration tickets for the new currency and people continuing to try to use the old currency despite all the publicity, but overall things were going well. Even in the management districts of witches with little contact with the outside world, such as the Spider Witch, Zombie Witch, and Pebble Witch, the monetary economy had been accepted. An economic zone had taken shape, including the Tohoku Hunting Association and the Hokkaido Magical Beast Farm.
Trade caravans protected by wizards were traveling back and forth along the land route opened by the defeat of Daidarabocchi. Repairs had begun on the major roads, which had suffered severe plant overgrowth and cracking, and apparently someone had even proposed putting freight cars on the railway someday.
The Tohoku Hunting Association is, as its name suggests, active in hunting, and many of its citizens are trained in butchering. As a result, they are far more advanced than Tokyo not only at defeating monsters, but also at stripping and utilizing their materials. Through trade, Tokyo had begun to benefit from that as well.
Small quantities of specialties that had barely survived from the previous era, such as beef tongue, zunda mochi, and the brand-name rice Hitomebore, were being imported. The exchange of goods and people between the two regions was increasing, and currency was being put to extensive use as a lubricant for that exchange.
With the kraken gone, the Pacific coastal shipping route had reopened, and aquatic magical beasts towing ships had revitalized the Hokkaido–Sendai–Tokyo trade route.
Aquatic magical beasts capable of towing ships were still few and precious, so trade was not especially frequent. Bad weather and appearances of aquatic Class A monsters often brought shipping to a halt.
Hokkaido's specialty was, needless to say, domesticated monsters—in other words, magical beasts. The magical beasts themselves were traded at high prices, as were cheese and yogurt made from their milk, though eating too much would upset your stomach.
Quite a few foodstuffs continued to be produced just as they had been before the previous era, including salmon jerky, dried scallop adductor muscles, and kelp.
I heard that coal from the Ishikari Coalfield was being sold cheaply as an import from Hokkaido, so I ordered 100 kilograms to be sent on the next trade ship. It cost twenty thousand yen—equivalent to two hundred thousand yen in the old currency—but I was making enough money that it didn't particularly hurt my wallet. I had to feed the fire lizards something good.
Meanwhile, the other two large survivor communities outside the economic sphere, the Biwa-ko Accord and the Arataki Group, were showing ominous signs of activity.
The Biwa-ko Accord had been thrown into internal turmoil by a political upheaval triggered by the mushroom pandemic.
However, around the beginning of the year, the Arataki Group, based in Kyushu, launched a lightning attack on the Biwa-ko Accord and seized control.
The Biwa-ko Accord was absorbed into the Arataki Group and ceased to exist.
When the Dragon Witch visited Lake Biwa around February as an envoy of the Tokyo Witches' Assembly, she was welcomed on the surface, but apparently said, "I feel like they were probing me. There was something nasty in the air."
Ominous.
Then again, the Dragon Witch's personality is what it is, so she's not entirely reliable as a source of information.
From what I've heard secondhand, the Arataki Group seems like a criminal organization. More specifically, yakuza.
This world, which collapsed in the Gremlin disaster, is one where violence is what matters. Perhaps because of the Japanese tendency to avoid conflict, the Tokyo Witches' Assembly managed to loosely hold together despite all sorts of incidents, and it has law and order. Tohoku and Hokkaido are the same.
But the Arataki Group is openly violent in the way of a post-apocalyptic world—in the bad sense.
They raided and subdued another survivor community? That's scary.
Still, since I only had one source and it wasn't reliable, I had no idea how much of it was true.
Maybe it wasn't actually a raid and subjugation at all. Perhaps the Biwa-ko Accord had gotten into such an appalling internal dispute that the Arataki Group had reluctantly intervened and rescued the citizens suffering because of the civil war! Even if they were yakuza, let them at least be the chivalrous kind.
For the Witches' Assembly, the problems happening at home were more important than issues in distant regions with which they had little contact.
For instance, the resumption of school education just last week, on April 4, had created a mountain of assorted problems.
For now, six-year elementary school education had been restored as compulsory education. But, for example, the children who had been six-year-old incoming first-graders when the Gremlin disaster occurred had now turned eleven without receiving a proper education.
They obviously couldn't simply start from sixth grade just because they were old enough to be sixth-graders.
On the other hand, they couldn't mix eleven-year-olds in with six-year-olds and treat them all as new first-graders. Their physical and intellectual development was at completely different stages.
The way they were handled varied wildly by school district. Some districts had no choice but to force children of completely different ages into the same classes because they lacked teachers. Others grouped children whose ages differed by no more than a year. Still others placed students in the grade corresponding to their age and tried to make up the difference with extensive remedial lessons.
But then complaints like, "Why does XX-chan get to be like that while I'm different?" began pouring out.
The grade-level problem alone was troublesome, but there were also reports of children being attacked by monsters on their way to school, entire groups of children getting lost while walking home together, parents crowding the schools because they were worried and had come to pick up their children, and a major brawl in which someone unleashed magic at school and injured people. Problem after problem after problem.
Seriously, just reading the sugarcoated episodes in the letters was exhausting.
It's endlessly troublesome.
And this was after they had dealt with the major problems before deciding to reopen education. It was terrifying.
Even after narrowing the subjects to four—Japanese language, arithmetic, science, and moral education, including health—the number of teachers was still barely sufficient. Their desperate efforts were evident in the way they mixed social studies into Japanese and art and crafts into science.
By contrast, it made me realize just how blessed education in Japan had been before the Gremlin disaster. Monster parents and suspicious intruders were the only problems back then—peaceful problems. Now there were actual monsters, so in districts with poor security, it wasn't just monster parents anymore; man-eating monsters might appear in the schoolyard. It wasn't funny.
I was truly glad to belong to the generation that had finished all its education in peaceful times.
If it sounded that difficult just hearing about it as an outsider, the people directly involved must have been in utter chaos. My thoughts and prayers~.
Education wasn't the only problem. Monster-related issues had also become a troublesome topic for the Witches' Assembly over the past few months.
The defeat of Daidarabocchi at the end of last year was still fresh in everyone's memory.
The mysterious black Gremlins that Daidarabocchi had possessed had begun appearing here and there among Class A monsters and some Class B monsters.
Around the time of the defeat of Daidarabocchi, cases began emerging in which powerful monsters became even more powerful.
Primarily, Class A monsters had begun using time-acceleration magic.
The mysterious black Gremlins that turned to dust and disappeared as time passed were always recovered from the corpses of monsters that used time-acceleration magic.
Class A monsters were powerful enough as it was. Only witches or wizards could defeat them.
The fact that these Class A monsters had begun acquiring a troublesome new ability was extremely serious.
At present, Class A monsters with black Gremlins made up about one-fifth of the total, and the time acceleration they used lasted only a few seconds. The witches were still able to deal with the monsters.
But the frequency with which monsters possessing black Gremlins appeared was gradually increasing.
There had already been several cases of battle-hardened witches being caught off guard and injured by monsters that suddenly accelerated.
I had no idea what would happen if the number of monsters with black Gremlins increased further and they awakened to new abilities. In the worst case, the witches' and wizards' ability to respond could be overwhelmed, and it wasn't impossible that Tokyo might be overrun by hordes of powerful monsters.
Five years had passed since the Gremlin disaster.
Why had monsters only now begun acquiring new abilities? And why were those abilities all so troublesome?
Apparently, the university's research budget for the monster studies department had been increased this year to investigate that mystery.
The combat department had also increased its enrollment, while the Gremlin department was reportedly researching anti-Class A monster Gremlin grenades made using sharpened Gremlins.
Okutama was a peaceful region where monsters no stronger than Class C-1 appeared, and the disorienting fog was always present. It was one of Tokyo's safest areas, but hearing all this made it impossible to let my guard down. Rising monster levels brought no benefits whatsoever.
Now then.
I spent my recuperation reading about all sorts of suspicious news in the letters, but May was approaching and rice planting was drawing near. The period during which I had to remain at rest had passed, so I took the fire lizards along for a walk to get my body used to moving again.
Rice planting was hard labor. I had to get my sluggish body back in shape before then.
The fire lizards understood the hierarchy of their pack perfectly, so when we went for walks, they never walked ahead of me. They trotted along behind me.
Tsubaki, who had the biggest attitude, chased grasshoppers and caught them with the front legs. The curious Mokutan kept busy chasing butterflies and breathing fire on dandelion fluff. The easygoing Sekitan tended to fall behind, so Tsubaki often prodded Sekitan with a tail to hurry the laggard along.
The disorienting fog covered all of Okutama, so I couldn't see even ten meters ahead and had no hope of enjoying the scenery. Still, walking along a familiar path was a pleasant change of pace.
I felt fine, too. I even tried jogging a little, and my stomach didn't hurt at all. It seemed safe to say I had made a complete recovery.
I'm back! Great Sage Dai is back!
I had walked all the way to the edge of Okutama and turned around to head home in high spirits, but then I thought I heard a voice beyond the fog and stopped.
When I listened closely, I could definitely hear a voice.
"...Uncle... Uncle..."
It was a human voice.
And it belonged to a young girl.
I was puzzled. People weren't supposed to come this way.
Wait, no. That could be it.
I remembered reading in a letter that children making their first trips to and from school were frequently getting lost.
Aha, I got it. Some kid must have followed the railway line and wandered all the way here.
It was possible.
After all, when I was in elementary school, I once wandered on foot all the way to the neighboring city. I somehow felt that if I just kept walking straight, I would reach somewhere with a familiar view. The police came looking for me after my parents reported me missing, and I ended up in their care.
Even though she was a lost child, she was still a person. I didn't particularly want to meet her.
But the disorienting fog was magical fog. Once you stepped into it, it would make you wander around until, at worst, you died of starvation.
"Uncle! Uncle! Uncleeeee! ...Where are you? Uncle!"
The girl's voice sounded lonely as she called for her uncle.
Uhh, I wanted to pretend I hadn't heard her and go home.
But if I ignored her here, she would probably keep wandering until she died.
Surely I couldn't do that.
I considered calling Hiyori to deal with it, but I couldn't summon her over something this damn trivial. A dragon appearing or someone falling ill would be a completely different matter.
I spent several full minutes summoning the courage to meet a stranger, then, just in case, carried Mokutan and Sekitan in my hands as makeshift flamethrowers and headed toward the voice.
It would be enough to guide the lost child to the Ome Line tracks and point her in the direction leading toward central Tokyo. Whether she could make it home from there was not my problem. I couldn't take responsibility for that.
The lost child who emerged from the fog was a young girl, just as her voice had suggested.
She was about as tall as a child in the lower grades of elementary school, with a young, adorable face, long green hair, and an elegant red flower ornament. A gentle floral fragrance, somehow both familiar and unfamiliar, wafted from the girl anxiously looking around in the fog.
As I approached to speak to her, the girl turned around and noticed me.
Then I noticed it, too.
The thing she was wearing on her lower half wasn't a skirt.
They were leaves and flower petals.
This girl was human from the waist up, but a plant from the waist down!
"Ah! It's Uncle! I finally found you!"
Her anxious expression changed in an instant, and her face lit up as she ran happily toward me.
I was so shocked that my legs nearly gave out.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?
You're one of the Flower Witch's plant offshoots, aren't you!?
Why are you here!?