Chapter 75
As I was making breakfast, Hiyori got up looking somehow utterly exhausted.
"Good morning."
"...Good morning."
Grumpy Hiyori reluctantly put on the mask hanging at her waist when I made a face-covering gesture with one hand, then stood beside me and peered at the breakfast I was preparing.
"Sit down. It'll be ready soon."
"Want me to take over?"
"I'm better at cooking, aren't I?"
"...You let the Spider Witch cook, though."
"What? You wanted to eat the Spider Witch's cooking? Then I'll call—"
"No, no! Stop. I want to eat your cooking, Dairi."
"Right?"
Hiyori obediently sat down at the table.
The keys to cooking are controlling the heat and the salt. I can precisely cut the ingredients and make them all the same size, so everything cooks evenly without any inconsistencies. I measure the seasonings with absolute precision, too! Leave cooking to me.
When I served a Japanese breakfast of pickled summer vegetables, rolled omelet, sardine meatball soup, and white rice, Hiyori shifted the mouth of her mask aside and eagerly dug in.
"Is it good?"
"Mm. I could eat this every day."
"I guess they don't serve Japanese food in America. Was it mostly bread over there?"
I sat down too and asked while sipping my meatball soup. Hiyori nodded and told me bits and pieces about the expedition.
The Black Ship that circumnavigated the Earth along the western route had collected technology and personnel from countries all over the world.
Unfortunately, they apparently hadn't discovered any especially new technology during their world tour. But they had found technologies that were shared between countries.
For example, in India, a secret sauce based on the same principle as the Tohoku Hunting Association's had become widespread. Its taste and composition were slightly different, though. It was still a mixture of monster stomach juices that made monster meat edible when marinated, but in India they added a special bile obtained from a particular kind of monster. The sour sauce became milder and acquired a faint sweetness, making the marinated meat more delicious and easier to eat.
Cows are considered sacred animals in India, and apparently endless arguments break out over whether monsters mutated from cows still count as cows and whether their meat is permissible to eat. But according to Hiyori, the Indian sauce tastes best when used to marinate cow-monster meat. Sounds delicious.
Barcelona, Spain, had been ground to a pulp by a Class-A monster anomaly, leaving it in ruins, but its survivors had passed on Gremlin implantation technology based on the same principle as the Hokkaido Monster Farm's.
But it was more advanced than Japan's implantation technology.
There were methods for reducing allergic reactions during implantation by first implanting a Gremlin in someone without allergies, removing it, and then implanting it in someone with allergies. Another method involved implanting it in an internal organ rather than on the body's surface to form a deeper connection with the monster.
Interesting. I'd already had mine implanted, so there was nothing I could do to improve it now. But for people who had yet to undergo implantation, these would be extremely useful advances.
The Black Ship fleet had stopped at more than twenty countries.
The circumstances of those countries varied widely.
Some maintained civilized societies.
Others had maintained civilization until recently, only to be destroyed by Class-A monster anomalies and now rebuilt.
In some countries, only traces of civilizations that had survived until recently remained, and the people had vanished.
There were countries whose people had crossed borders and banded together to survive, countries torn apart by internal conflicts, settlements too small to be called villages where only a few Transcendents gathered to live, and human-only villages eking out a living under the protection of powerful monsters that had no interest in humanity, borrowing strength from the tiger. There were all sorts of places.
Overall, the world's technological and civilizational level was middling. Japan and America were the two giants in both technology and population, with India a few steps behind and scattered small communities beyond that.
Of course, many countries had not been visited by the Black Ship during its circumnavigation of the world. There were probably countless more unknown survivor communities out there, simply because no one knew about them yet.
Taking things in a somewhat different direction from technology and personnel, the explosive increase in samples of magical incantations was probably one of the greatest achievements of the world tour.
Even communities stretched so thin that they couldn't spare people for the Demon King battle without leaving themselves defenseless and bringing about their destruction were extremely eager to participate in magic trade by exchanging incantations.
Among the magic collected by the Black Ship during its journey around the world were several useful spells.
A self-enhancement spell that consumed more mana than Vampiric Self-Enhancement but had no blood cost.
An estrus spell used locally to promote the breeding of livestock and oil-producing plankton.
A fire spell with low mana consumption, though it lacked the power to incinerate Gremlins or melt the ice produced by Great Glacier Magic.
Japan's Harvest Magic had spread throughout the world, and apparently every community was overjoyed to receive it.
That made sense. Its mana consumption was ridiculously low, it could be cast by ordinary people using a bypass incantation, and although users had to observe certain precautions, it could easily increase agricultural yields to a little over double. It was an absurdly useful spell, like a bug or a cheat.
But even Harvest Magic might lose out to the healing magic of the Saintess in Vatican City.
One of the heroes who defeated the Demon King, Saintess Ruche's healing magic was the recovery magic all humanity had yearned for.
The Saintess's miracles healed injuries, cured ailments, and, with advanced incantations, cured radiation sickness caused by exposure and even regenerated lost body parts. It could detoxify people, cure cancer, and even cure Alzheimer's. It was a monstrous healing spell. Of course, it couldn't resurrect the dead.
Humanity lost electricity, and medicine regressed drastically. Countless people who could have been saved died because adequate treatment was no longer available. I might have died too if I'd come down with a slightly more dangerous illness instead of appendicitis. Hiyori's younger sister had also died because of the loss of medical care.
Healing magic would greatly improve healthcare worldwide. If anything, it had surpassed the limits of medicine in the previous era.
However, healing magic wasn't an all-purpose, invincible supreme spell.
One of its drawbacks was its high mana consumption.
Even the lowest-cost healing spell, which could only cure something like a hangover or a minor cut, consumed 17K. That was more expensive than Ice Spear Magic.
Even so, when combined with surgery, it could immediately repair ruptured blood vessels and provide emergency treatment for damaged organs, so 17K was cheap for what it could do.
The second-cheapest healing spell consumed 80K.
For witches and wizards, it functioned as convenient basic treatment, but for ordinary people, that was an extremely heavy cost. There might not be even ten people in all of Japan capable of using it.
The highest-level healing spell consumed 4200K, making it an undisputed great spell. Since it was an outrageously powerful healing spell that could instantly cure almost anything as long as the patient wasn't dead, its enormous cost was only fitting. But even Hiyori, with her tremendous mana, could use it only twice in succession. Its consumption was so severe that she couldn't cast it a third time.
Apparently, Saintess Ruche had a racial aptitude for healing magic, allowing her to cast every healing spell at roughly one-seventh the mana cost while also controlling the area of its healing effect. She's strong. The title of Saintess isn't for show.
Another drawback was that every incantation contained unpronounceable sounds.
However, Professor Ohinata Kei, Japan's foremost professor of magical linguistics and the president of Tokyo University of Magic, had already finished developing a bypass incantation for the lowest-cost healing spell.
She's just too much of a genius...!
You know, that ermine professor deserves to have her name engraved in human history. It's incredible that she made both Harvest Magic and healing magic usable by humanity.
Since mana consumption was such a serious obstacle, the number of healing magic users probably wouldn't increase that much, even though humanity's average mana capacity had risen through mana training.
Even so, with the scrolls I'd developed, I could have witches and wizards stockpile powerful, high-cost healing magic for emergencies.
Combined with other technologies, we could draw out the full potential of healing magic.
Apparently, my healing magic scrolls had played a major role in the Demon King battle alongside my defensive magic attachments.
"Dairi's scrolls saved at least ten of the American Mutants. Combined with the magic staves, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they saved everyone's lives. Be proud, Dairi. You saved the world."
Hiyori looked as happy as if she were talking about her own accomplishment.
I-I did? I saved the world?
I prided myself on being the world's greatest genius Wandmaker, but apparently I'd somehow saved the world too.
...I don't feel it at all...!
While Hiyori and the rest of the hero party were slugging it out with the Demon King, all I did was live comfortably in the countryside, studying magical writing and operating on mermaids.
So when people told me, "The world was saved thanks to you," it didn't feel real at all. I'd only saved a mermaid. What did they mean, the world?
Well, if Hiyori said I'd saved it, I probably had. It wasn't as though I had any proof that I'd saved the world standing right in front of me.
Oh, right. Speaking of proof that the world had been saved...
"What was the Demon King like? What loot did he drop? And what about the Gremlin?"
I'd made a huge number of magical items for the hero party and the American military.
In exchange, I had a contract to receive materials from the Demon King.
How was it, Hiyori-san?!
What was the Demon King like?! What items did you get?!
"The Demon King? The Demon King was a black humanoid giant. It had horns, and its entire body was covered in something like writhing black tentacles. Since it used the magic of the witches and wizards it had absorbed, it could speak... I suppose. The four of us fought it together, but we never saw the bottom of its mana reserves. It was an unbelievable monster. I never want to fight it again."
"Oh. With that ridiculous amount of mana, was its Gremlin huge too?"
When I leaned forward, Hiyori scratched her head apologetically.
"No, sorry. I was unconscious when it was defeated, so I don't know. But Conrad... ah, the leader of the hero party... said that when it died, it spat out all the witches, wizards, and magic stones it had absorbed. Even the magic stones, which should have been shattered, had reassembled, and the corpses of the witches and wizards, which should have been horribly damaged, had been restored. No one knows why. People had considered the possibility that things absorbed by the Demon King might remain intact without being digested, but no one had imagined that they would be repaired.
"Huh...? I can understand the shattered magic stones being restored—I mean, that's actually pretty impressive—but the corpses were repaired too...? Why?"
"Who knows? I don't know. America will probably investigate the cause.
After the Dragon Witch looks over the mines in America where she secured mining rights, she should return home with a list of the materials obtained from the Demon King and their values. I think the witches' and wizards' corpses should be returned to America, but we'll probably get at least several magic stones. Look forward to it."
"Oh. Sounds pretty good."
I'd even considered the possibility that the Demon King's corpse might vanish completely along with everything it had absorbed, as the Black Gremlin had, so the information Hiyori gave me was very welcome.
I wouldn't need the Transcendents' corpses, so I might get to pick and choose from the Demon King materials and magic stones (plus the Demon King Gremlin?).
The fact that the Dragon Witch was bringing back the Demon King materials and a list of their appraised values was a source of concern—she would definitely try to swipe some—but Hiyori could probably make her spill everything by threatening her.
I was getting excited.
I couldn't wait for the Demon King materials to arrive!