Chapter 61
It was the end of October, and the “migration” of Class A monsters had finally ended. The skies and seas had grown quiet.
The Professor had come to visit Okutama for the first time in a while, but looked a little worn out, so I laid the small body down on the blanket spread over the living-room table and gently brushed it with a comb.
"Good work, Professor."
"Ahh...!"
The Professor twisted as though tickled, but only for a moment. Soon, the Professor was drooling, the blissful expression making the little body go completely limp.
After carefully combing the Professor from head to tail, I gave the little chin a light scratch. The stoat drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep, its healthy color restored and all signs of fatigue blown away.
Heh heh heh. Back in middle school, these godlike hands of mine subdued the neighborhood cat gatherings. A tiny stoat wouldn't even be able to resist...!
Hiyori, who had brewed herself some tea without asking, gulped when she saw the Professor asleep on its back with its belly shamelessly exposed and its paws raised in surrender.
"Maybe I should learn how to transform into a stoat, too..."
"What, you want to be groomed? You shameless woman! If you want me to play with your hair that badly, shall I braid it?"
"That. Please do."
I had only meant to tease her, but she obediently turned her back and offered me her hair, so I resigned myself to running the comb through it. Whatever happened to the saying that a woman's hair is her life? She just handed her life over without a second thought.
Well, well, what lovely hair you have, ma'am. Despite having the sort of battle history that suggests you feed blood to your hair, you've got refined, glossy black locks that show signs of meticulous daily care. Very fine indeed.
"Oh. You really are good at this. But hmm. I don't think this is just dexterity. You seem used to handling women's hair... Hey, wait a minute! Ohri, have you ever had a girlfriend?!"
"How could that be any more wrong?! I've never had one! I have an older sister. Thinking back, the only thing she ever praised me for was how well I took care of her hair after her baths."
Then again, I don't remember ever praising my sister either, so I suppose we're even.
"Oh. It was family..."
"I may have mentioned this before, but my family disowned me. Don't dig too deeply into this subject. Anyway, do you have a hairstyle in mind?"
"Hmm... Just tie it up however you like. Any style is fine as long as it won't get in the way when I move around vigorously."
"Okay, leave it to me."
Hiyori's hair was a first-rate specimen that had been properly cared for, so I combed it with the care I'd use when handling a large gemstone.
At first, Hiyori relaxed, letting the tension drain from her shoulders as she went limp, but after a while she seemed to grow a little bored and started a conversation.
"Kei-chan and I were both busy in October, so we couldn't come here to play very often. How was Okutama?"
"I made wands for this year's graduating class at the university, and a Gremlin puzzle for Fuyou's educational development. The only unusual thing was seeing Class A monsters flying far away in the sky during their 'migration.' Okutama was peaceful, though I've heard things were difficult all over the place."
The Tokyo Witches' Gathering had made it through the peak of the Class A monster abnormalities, the beginning of the “migration,” and its conclusion with almost no casualties.
It had been an emergency severe enough that Tokyo might have collapsed under the strain of its response capabilities, yet they got through it with only a few mages permanently incapacitated and several dozen suffering serious or minor injuries. They did well. I had only been making wands in the countryside, so I knew how fierce the battles had been only through hearsay.
There was no doubt that the magic-stone wands I made, along with the university's mana-training method, which raised the general level of mages, had made a difference.
I had sent magic-stone wands to the Lake Biwa Accord as well, and apparently they had managed to overcome their crisis too, perhaps thanks to them.
Though, strictly speaking, they had apparently abandoned thirty percent of their former habitable zone and reduced the area they defended to make the numbers work. So rather than saying they “made it through,” perhaps “weren't wiped out” would be more accurate.
The Lake Biwa Accord had done well, considering the Arataki-gumi had beaten them bloody and made a complete mess of their internal affairs.
The Lake Biwa Accord had originally been a community divided between witches and wizards along hawk-and-dove lines. But in the face of the Arataki-gumi's wave attacks in the form of the Class A monster abnormalities, they had been forced to unite. Their grudges remained, but the friction seemed to have lessened. As proof, I heard that the Tokyo Witches' Gathering had received a request to join its economic sphere, jointly signed by all the Accord's major members.
Professor Ohinata had been exhausted from attending an expert advisory council on expanding the economic sphere every day. Seriously, good work. If I had been participating, I would have been rushed to the hospital with a stomach ulcer six hours before the very first meeting.
In Kyushu, formerly controlled by the Arataki-gumi, two wizards who had been painstakingly protecting a small survivor community joined up with Fukuoka City, where four hundred thousand people had been left destitute after losing their protector.
A witch who had barely escaped Okinawa after being defeated by Class A monsters and burned out of her home also joined them. The three Transcendents combined their strength and somehow got through the Class A monster abnormalities with a population of only forty thousand.
Fukuoka's population of four hundred thousand had plummeted to one-tenth of that. They had avoided total annihilation, but Kyushu had lost its power.
The Tohoku Hunting Association countered the Class A monsters' time acceleration with sealing rounds and monster tongs, then used their excellent coordination to reliably take them down one at a time as a group, making it through without casualties.
The fact that there had been nothing noteworthy was itself noteworthy. The Tohoku Hunting Association was remarkably stable even during emergencies. Its climate does give off a rather harsh impression, though.
The Hokkaido Magical Beast Farm had been mostly stable, but there had been an upheaval at the very end.
In Hokkaido, monster taming and domestication were widespread. The Guardian Beast “Mountain Bear,” which had even appeared on the design of the new coins, was particularly famous. It had originally been a fearsome Class A-2 monster before being tamed. There were a handful of other Class A monsters being used in the same way as well.
The Class A monster abnormalities affected allies and enemies alike.
In other words, even as wild Class A monsters grew more powerful, the domesticated Class A monsters on the allied side grew stronger at the same time. That was why the Hokkaido Magical Beast Farm maintained a balance of power and remained stable until the final stage of the Class A monster abnormalities.
However, when the “migration” began, even the magical beasts they had domesticated all tried to head east at once. Communication became completely impossible, they lost control of them, and several actually disappeared across the sea.
Even Mountain Bear, their greatest asset, nearly defected. While three wizards struggled to restrain it as it desperately tried to head east, a witch took a gamble and extracted the Black Gremlin believed to be the cause.
Mountain Bear then abandoned its migration and returned to its senses.
It was an intriguing phenomenon.
According to the conclusion reached by the Department of Magical Zoology after integrating the information gathered from all over the country, the “migration” apparently occurred because of the Black Gremlin's dominance.
Originally, Class A monsters did not possess Black Gremlins.
But at some point, Black Gremlins began to appear inside their bodies. Black Gremlins grew and increased in size as time passed. The larger they became, the stronger the time-acceleration magic derived from them grew, and the Class A monsters became more powerful.
Then, once a Black Gremlin grew larger than the Gremlin the Class A monster had originally possessed, the monster began single-mindedly heading east.
The data gathered on eastward movement across Japan, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, also revealed where the Class A monsters were going.
They had all headed east, but their angles differed slightly.
In Hokkaido, their paths slanted a little south. In Kyushu, they slanted a little north.
When the routes taken by Class A monsters from every region were plotted on a globe, all the lines converged roughly at one point.
That place was America, around Idaho, home to the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone National Park.
We didn't know what was in Idaho, or who was there.
However, since Class A monsters believed to be Chinese had also been observed coming from west of Japan and heading east, there was a high likelihood that Class A monsters from all over the world were gathering in Idaho.
Even the Class A-1 monster Daidarabotchi had possessed a Black Gremlin. The monster army would surely include a large number of Class A-1 monsters as well.
Idaho was undoubtedly hell on earth right now.
This was way too dangerous. America was finished.
Japan had a chance to catch its breath now that almost all its Class A monsters had vanished, but this wasn't someone else's problem.
If the Class A monsters' gathering point had been Japan, Japan would have been finished.
The Blue Witch could kill even a Class A-1 monster instantly, but that instant kill came at the cost of consuming all her mana. If multiple Class A-1 monsters appeared, even the strongest witch would be at a disadvantage.
If the Class A monsters gathered in Idaho embarked on a world tour, the entire world would be in trouble.
The Class A monster abnormalities had reached a lull. But the situation was still continuing in a distant foreign land.
There had been talk of sending an expedition to America, but it was another continent separated from us by the Pacific Ocean. It wasn't a simple matter.
The prevailing opinion was that although we needed to look beyond our borders, we should first consolidate our position at home.
The Class A monsters had vanished from Japan, and the strongest monsters currently remaining in the country were Class B-1 monsters.
This was a major opportunity to push back the human habitable zone, which had done nothing but shrink, and reclaim lost territory.
It would be meaningless to reclaim lost territory from the clutches of the monsters running rampant there if we couldn't maintain it afterward. Maintaining territory generally required a witch or wizard, but Minato Ward had established a great precedent as an exception.
A watchtower was set up in the center of the territory, a ritual-magic unit monitored it with curse-killing spells, and a unit of trained mages armed with powerful wands patrolled the area. This made it possible to maintain the territory.
Moreover, mana training had raised the amount of mana possessed by the curse-killing unit, giving people hope that one day they might even be able to destroy Class A monsters with curse-killing spells or some other great magic.
The problem was that the ritual-magic implements at the heart of the system were difficult to manufacture.
Ritual-magic implements had to be carved from a single massive Gremlin, with multiple cores of exactly the same shape cut out of it. The Thirteen Ritual Implements used in Minato Ward had been carved from an enormous 80-mm Gremlin taken from a Class A-1 monster.
Gremlins that large were extraordinarily rare.
Even if we wanted to make ritual-magic implements, we had no material.
If we dropped one rank and tried using a Gremlin from a Class A-2 monster, its size fell sharply, to around 40 mm.
You could make implements from a 40-mm Gremlin. However, because of the size limitation, they couldn't make thirteen implements. Three or four at most.
The advantage of ritual implements was that they let you split the mana cost among multiple people. If you gathered thirteen people with 100K mana each, the Thirteen Ritual Implements could cast great magic costing 1,300K mana.
But four implements could manage only 400K. That was enough for an outstanding spell by ordinary standards, but it was unreliable against Class B-1 or Class A-3 monsters.
The Class A monsters had temporarily vanished from Japan, but as time passed, animals would mutate again and new Class A monsters would begin to appear.
That was why I wanted to reclaim territory before then.
Reclaiming territory required ritual-magic implements.
But we had no material for ritual-magic implements.
So that's the situation: we're in a bind.
While we talked, Hiyori's responses grew slower, and she fell asleep.
As a finishing touch, I used a barrette I had made while playing with her hair to tie up her long locks, then draped a blanket over Hiyori, who was sleeping peacefully in her chair.
Then, careful not to wake the women who were asleep, I took the research materials from the Department of Gremlin Engineering that Professor Ohinata had brought as a souvenir and headed silently to the workshop.
Well, then.
My latest creation, the Sage's Staff, had been poorly received, while making mana rulers had been well received but was tedious, exhausting work.
It was about time I released another excellent new product.
I had asked Professor Ohinata to bring me the Department of Gremlin Engineering's research materials so I could get inspiration for a new creation, and they were conducting some remarkably interesting research.
Besides established fields such as melting and resolidification and Amulets, they were also studying the properties of magic stones.
Their completely new research included making electrical-circuit substitutes using Gremlins, studying engines that used Gremlins as an energy source, and attempts to extract electricity from Gremlins.
None of them had produced any particularly noteworthy results, but considering that the mana-training method had made a major discovery after lying dormant for years, there was reason for hope.
Even if, after years of exhaustive research, they discovered that “this field has no future,” that would still be a major achievement. It would mean they no longer had to spend their efforts on that field.
The Department of Gremlin Engineering's research materials were all fascinating.
I skimmed through everything, and the thing that caught my eye most was “Gremlin Chain,” which was still nothing more than a note of an idea, not even a developed theory.
The proposer was Professor Waldifried Kvant, Professor Handa's successor. What an absurdly cool name. He must be German, right?
Professor Kvant apparently had a deep understanding of geometry and woodcarving, and seemed to come up with many ideas combining the two. A Gremlin Chain was the Gremlin version of a wood chain, or carved wooden chain.
Normally, chains were made of metal or plastic. The links were made one by one and connected, so each link had a seam.
Carved wooden chains were different. Their links had no seams. All the connected links were carved out of a single piece of wood, already joined together from the start.
What would happen if you made this kind of carved wooden chain from Gremlins? That was the idea behind the “Gremlin Chain.”
What happens, Professor Kvant?! I wondered as I turned the page, only to find the rest blank. Apparently he had genuinely just thought of it and jotted it down.
Well, yes. Carving an already difficult wooden chain out of Gremlins, an extraordinarily difficult material to process, was an absurd proposition. The university probably couldn't make a real one.
But I could make one!
I sensed an indirect intention along the lines of, “The university can't test this idea, so perhaps I can pass it to Professor Ohinata, and if it catches 0933's eye, maybe they will do it for us.” But I was happy to play along. It looked fun.
For now, I took one 40-mm Gremlin from my stock and carved out a Gremlin Chain with a 3-mm ring diameter and a total length of 100 mm.
When I held one end in my hand and let it swing in the air, it made a pleasant little clinking sound.
Hmm. It would make a nice accessory chain. Stylish and beautiful. And I could probably be the only person who could make one.
Next, I tried magic.
The multilayered structure amplified power, the fractal structure created a standby state while reducing power, and a Möbius loop produced unchanged power, luminescence, and resonance.
What would a chain do?
To be safe, I hid behind the workbench and cast a spell on the Gremlin Chain lying on top of it.
"Fire!"
The Gremlin Chain was enveloped in white light, rose into the air, and struck the ceiling.
Whoa! It floated! Something happened!
Looking up at the ceiling, I saw that the Gremlin Chain remained stuck there, still glowing with white light.
Was it continuously generating buoyancy? Or was it antigravity?
The white light... It was the same color as the white beam from “Fire!” Had the spell been enchanted onto it? But “Fire!” didn't have any levitation effect, did it? What was going on?
I brought over a stepladder and pulled on the Gremlin Chain stuck to the ceiling. There was some resistance, but I easily pulled it back down to the floor. However, as soon as I let go, it rose again and stuck to the ceiling.
Hmm. The force lifting it wasn't particularly strong. It was far weaker than a kickboard submerged underwater.
I tied weights to the Gremlin Chain with thread, and it fell when the weight passed just over 100 grams.
When I cut the 100-mm Gremlin Chain down to 10 mm, it lost its light and buoyancy. After casting the spell again, it glowed white and floated, but this time it fell when the weight passed just over 10 grams. It seemed reasonable to conclude that it generated buoyancy equal to its own weight plus approximately one gram per millimeter of length.
This time, I cast “Freeze!” and it rose into the air again. Its buoyancy was the same as with “Fire!”—its own weight plus approximately one gram per millimeter. That part seemed to be the same regardless of the spell.
However, this time it glowed blue-white instead of white. It felt faintly cold to the touch.
Aha. So in terms of its effects, it was enchantment plus levitation?
When I watched it for a while without doing anything, it lost its buoyancy and light after about five minutes and fell.
With “Fire!” the effect ended after a little over a minute and it fell naturally. So it floated for around seventy to eighty seconds per 1K of mana consumed by the spell. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
As I experimented with my new toy, following my curiosity wherever it led, I heard footsteps, and Hiyori, clearly just awakened, poked her head into the workshop.
"Hey, Ohri, about your hair... What is that? What? What did you make this time? Did you make another incomprehensible artifact?"
"You came at the perfect time. What do you think of this, Hiyori? What about the mana flow and so on?"
"Hmm? This is, oh, a chain. You made something strange again. No, the mana flow is strange too, isn't it?"
After taking the chain from me, Hiyori fell silent and stopped moving.
Meanwhile, the Gremlin Chain began rising and falling without anyone touching it or saying anything. It wasn't glowing, either.
What? Was she controlling it without chanting? Telekinesis?!
Hiyori made the chain float and sink as though it were alive for a while, then eventually nodded and handed it back to me.
"When you pour mana into it, it generates a force field. I don't fully understand the buoyancy, but judging from the ratio between the mana infused and the resulting effect, the levitation is a bonus. The mana force field is the primary effect."
"A mana force field? Like an Amulet?"
"It's a different kind of force field. From here, like this..."
Hiyori indicated the area around the chain with her finger, as though drawing a spiral, but soon gave up trying to explain.
"I can't explain it to someone who can't control mana, Ohri. But, let's see... If I had to put it into words... Hmm, it's something like mana and magic being pulled in, repelled, and then falling away?"
"????"
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. That wasn't an explanation at all. Though she had said she couldn't explain it, so I suppose that was to be expected.
Hiyori was having trouble explaining it, but after thinking for a moment, she connected the two ends of the chain into a ring.
"Ohri, put your hand inside this ring."
"Okay. Whoa? What is this? It feels weird."
"Can you feel it? A physical force field is concentrated there, and at the same time, a magical force field is concentrated at the center of the ring."
The hand I thrust inside the ring tingled. I felt something like invisible pressure emanating from the ring toward its center. It was like pushing my hand into a mass of rubber and being squeezed. The pressure wasn't very strong, but I could definitely feel it.
"And... Hmm, no, it's dangerous here. Let's go to the backyard."
"What is it? Is there still something else?"
With Hiyori pushing me from behind, we left the workshop and went to the backyard.
Hiyori held the Gremlin Chain ring in one hand, aimed it toward a standing tree, and cast a spell.
"Freezing Javelin."
It was the familiar spell I had heard many times.
However, the spell that activated was different from usual.
A huge ice spear, large enough to wrap both arms around, should have shot out. Instead, the spear formed inside the chain ring was tiny, about the size of a ballpoint pen.
Then it vanished in the blink of an eye with a popping sound, leaving a hole through the trunk in its line of fire. From farther away came the sound of a tree falling.
I was startled, but Hiyori was startled too.
Why are you surprised when you were the one showing it off? Explain!
"I expected it to turn out something like this, but I didn't expect it to be this extreme. To give you the conclusion first, this chain ring is a magic-compression device."
"Oh...! How is that different from increasing its power?"
"You saw that spear. Its mana cost didn't change, and while the power did change in the end, the mana put into it wasn't amplified. It was simply compressed into a smaller space, and the compression increased its initial velocity as well. Shall I use a slightly easier spell to understand? Crystal, seasons turn, netherworld predator—bestow your blessing!"
The Harvest Magic she cast made the difference easy to understand.
Harvest Magic normally released a fan-shaped wave of sparkling light. However, the Harvest Magic fired through the Gremlin Chain ring became a straight, sparkling beam. It struck the standing tree, which sprouted a thick mass of green leaves despite winter being just around the corner.
"Aha, I see? Passing magic through the ring turns area magic into single-target magic, and it seems single-target magic becomes piercing magic."
"That's more or less correct."
Then it was strong!
This thing was useful!
She said the power itself didn't change, but concentrating the power at a single point effectively increased it. If you focused the power of a slap into a needle-sized point, it would punch a hole in someone's cheek even though the total power was the same. Strong. I had read in all kinds of manga that concentrating power that was being poured out into a single point made it the strongest.
"Witches and wizards can do more or less the same thing. The Spider Witch concentrated her fog of confusion and wrapped it around decoys, didn't she? The principle is the same. However, the compression ratio of this chain ring is different. It doesn't require mana control, either. I am currently pouring mana into this chain to deploy the force field, but it seems that casting a spell at the chain, as you did, can also deploy the force field..."
"Nice! So we can reproduce a skill exclusive to Transcendents with equipment! That's hot, that's hot! I'm getting excited!"
I rushed back to the workshop and, carried away by my blazing passion and overflowing ideas, became absorbed in processing Gremlins and carving out chain after chain.
I didn't even want to waste time cooking. I would say I forgot to eat and sleep while absorbed in my work, except that Hiyori and the Professor repeatedly dragged me to the table or bed, fed me, and put me to sleep.
My sense of time grew hazy, and I no longer remembered how long I had been absorbed in processing, prototyping, and research.
But when I finally reached a stopping point and felt satisfied, it was already the middle of November. I seemed to have been absorbed in it for about two weeks.
They were two incredibly fun weeks. But they felt like three days. That's how enjoyable it was, and how much I had accomplished.
I incorporated a system of double-crossed Gremlin Chain rings, which I named the “Kvant-Style Magic-Compression Crossed Rings,” into Kyanos.
The two crossed chain rings surrounded Kyanos's core like Saturn's rings, compressing magic, restricting its area, reducing its size, increasing its piercing power, and raising its strength and projectile speed.
Since it could only compress magic, it wasn't suited to situations where you wanted to expand a spell's area or increase its size. However, in those situations, you could cancel the ring's activation and put it into an inactive state, allowing you to use magic as usual.
The strongest wand had become even stronger. There was something incredibly satisfying about piling more and more supertechnology onto an artifact. You can never make Kyanos too strong. I also trusted Hiyori to master anything I gave her.
The Kvant-Style Magic-Compression Rings could be used to enhance ordinary general-purpose wands besides Kyanos. Simply surrounding a magic wand's core with chain rings made it easy to upgrade.
For ordinary mages who couldn't control mana,
① Activate the compression rings by casting a spell through the Gremlin Chain.
② Cast the spell you actually want to use afterward.
That procedure was necessary, but the effect was so wonderful that Professor Ohinata, who tested it, danced the stoat dance.
The evolution of magic wands would never stop. I hoped the mages of the world would run wild with the ability to switch between compression mode and normal mode.