Chapter 76
When introducing magical script to Curanos, I wanted to rely on Professor Ohinata's expertise, but he seemed to have been busy for a while after returning from his studies in America.
They said the trip around the world and the campaign to defeat the Demon King had been dramatic and dynamic, but Tokyo had seen its fair share of incidents as well.
The massive floods caused by the prolonged rains rendered the subway network, which had been patched together and used since the previous era, completely unusable. The ground softened, and quite a few sections collapsed. The Mermaid Witch's trip up the Tama River and the emergency surgery were still fresh in everyone's memories.
It had been calculated that repairing the levees and dams along the rivers flowing through Tokyo would require a tremendous amount of manpower, so there were high hopes for the research into indirect incantations for self-enhancement magic that the professor had brought back, to be used in place of heavy machinery.
The successful reclamation of Sumida Ward and Hachioji City was another major change.
The two districts had been abandoned ever since the witches there died during the pandemic, and people had been calling for the lost territory to be recovered for a long time.
This time, taking advantage of the lull after the Class A monsters had moved on, trained mage units swept away the monsters infesting both districts. Thus, the reclamation was achieved.
Defenses were now being strengthened at a breakneck pace through the deployment of dynamite, the construction of defensive lines using cannon-flower Hosenka, and stockpiling scrolls containing grand spells.
Nine months had passed since the Class A monsters' migration ended, and reports of new Class A monsters had begun to increase. The next few months would be a test of whether humanity could hold on to the territory it had reclaimed.
There was the precedent of Minato Ward, and people believed things would work out, but Minato had the advantage of substantial support from the nearby witches and wizards, with the waterfront protected by the Mermaid Witch. Its wide-area surveillance using death curses was also effective. Its conditions were far better than those of Sumida Ward and Hachioji City.
If we could reclaim and hold two places with worse conditions than Minato Ward, then we could expect our stable sphere of habitation to keep expanding from here on out.
Professor Ohinata had also been invited to meetings concerning the defense of the reclaimed territories.
Of course, his university work as a professor—his regular profession—was keeping him busy too.
Professor Ohinata had originally been well versed in spoken magical language, so apparently he picked up the written form extremely quickly as well. He covered the fundamentals of magical script aboard the ship, then, after arriving in Cuba, asked American researchers of magical linguistics to teach him and began working on its applications. He mastered magical script at breakneck speed.
They said the American side was also learning Professor Ohinata's research into spoken magical language with astonishing comprehension.
Smart people really are on a different level. He must have learned it at about ten times my speed.
Still, it wasn't as though they had finished exchanging all their knowledge and fully absorbed it into their own understanding in just those few months.
The things they hadn't been able to teach and the things they hadn't been able to learn completely were compiled into thick documents and exchanged.
The English magical-script textbooks, specialized books, and papers Professor Ohinata had brought back would surely be studied exhaustively by the members of the linguistics department who had been eagerly awaiting his return.
Once the chaos of returning American citizens to the mainland after the Demon King's defeat, negotiating with Cuba—which had hosted the government in exile and looked after it—and rebuilding industry and the foundations of daily life had settled down, America apparently planned to start a regular steamboat service to Japan. We could look forward to further technological exchanges and trade.
Professor Ohinata finally had some free time once August was in full swing, at the height of summer.
When the stoat showed up in Okutama, it was wilting from the heat, so I hastily opened Pet Salon Oori. I trimmed its fur, which had been fixed in place as a warm winter coat, brushed it out, and reduced its volume to cool it down.
The neatly trimmed stoat looked light on its feet as it happily bounced around, then lapped at a small dish of cold barley tea while listening to my concerns.
"――――So this is what I came up with. We stack as many rhetorical marks resembling 'drawing things out' as possible, then keep the magic circle activating in a very slow loop. We'll use that as Curanos's anti-theft security.
"Since Hiyori is its user, it would be 'Freeze.' The freezing magic circle built into the staff will always be active, keeping it constantly cloaked in intense cold. Hiyori can use it normally because she has resistance to cold, but anyone without that resistance will freeze just from holding it. Their fingers would get frostbite in no time, too."
"I see. So it would be possible to steal Curanos and use it, but anyone other than its rightful owner would be forced to suffer the freezing drawback... Is that the idea?"
"Exactly. That's right."
In other words, I was turning Curanos into cursed equipment.
I wanted anyone other than Hiyori, its rightful owner, to be forced to take freezing damage if they tried to use it.
I'd been thinking about this ever since the Arataki Group nearly stole Curanos, but if I planned to keep adding more and more to Curanos's capabilities, I felt it needed a user restriction.
Ideally, I wanted a complete user-only lock that made Curanos totally unusable to anyone but Hiyori. However, I couldn't think of any concrete mechanism that would make it possible.
So I had settled for turning it into cursed equipment.
This cursed-equipment conversion could be applied to all kinds of Transcendents.
Hiyori, of course, had resistance to cold, so I would give the staff a curse of cold.
For Tsugibi, I could give it a curse of flame.
The Spider Witch could ignore the fog of confusion, so I would give her equipment a fog-of-confusion effect.
For the Eyeball Witch, it would probably be a petrifying gaze.
Witches and wizards were generally resistant to their own magical systems.
This was an anti-theft security system that took advantage of that fact.
After carefully examining my draft of the curse magic circle for Curanos, Professor Ohinata took a special miniature pencil in his tiny paws and corrected the writing.
"The grammar is correct. As expected of you, Oori-san! It's so well written that you could put it in a textbook as an example exactly as it is. Wonderful.
"But if you don't mind letting me make a few changes to improve it further, I'll start by stretching this line way out. If the character immediately after the thick line at the beginning of the sentence is a thin vertical line, you can add spaces like this and insert up to three rhetorical marks. The rhetorical marks written in these spaces apply to the entire sentence. To maximize the slowing effect on the magic loop, I think it would be better to use a double-emphasis expression that sandwiches one rhetorical mark between two others, rather than using three different marks. Think of it as putting A between B's and writing BAB. The rhetorical marks to use are..."
The magic circle Professor Ohinata briskly corrected while explaining became a bulky piece of writing packed with rhetorical marks.
Whoa. So that writing could change this much? Even to an amateur like me, it was obvious that the notation had become considerably more difficult.
"Finished. I think this is the best version... There is one thing I'd like to ask, though. This magical script you wrote, Oori-san—is this just a quirk of your handwriting? The characters get thinner and thicker all over, and, well, it looks like some kind of stylish font."
"Oh, that's decorative lettering I came up with. Cool, right? I tweak the way I write it without impairing the letters' functions."
"...What? This way of writing still works as magical script?"
"It does. I've pushed it right to the limit where it stops working if anything is even a little too thick or too long, or if the angle of a stroke is off, so you shouldn't imitate it. It has no purpose beyond looking stylish."
"Wow! This is incredible. It's fascinating—you're a genius! Can I have this draft? I'd really love to take it back to the university!"
"Sure. Go ahead and take it. You know the shelf where I keep the workshop blueprints, right? I've put a chart of all the decorative lettering in there, so you can take that too if you're interested."
The stoat thanked me, then scampered cheerfully across the workshop floor.
The decorative letters were the product of playing around, one hundred percent. Still, Professor Ohinata was probably the kind of person who got excited looking at English italics and cursive, or Japanese calligraphy fonts. I understood the feeling.
Using the example corrected by an expert in magical script as a reference, I went to the reverberatory furnace, melted magical alloy, and wrote the magic circle to be built into Curanos. All that remained was to incorporate this curse-lettering component around the boundary between the staff's core and handle, then weld it in place.
Since the curse mechanism was an anti-theft device, it would be a problem if someone could simply remove it. So I built it in so that it would be tightly interwoven with the section where the staff's functions were concentrated. Anyone who tried to remove it carelessly would end up destroying functions that absolutely shouldn't be damaged.
This curse can't be dispelled~! Any scoundrel who tries to steal Curanos can cry and regret it.
Professor Ohinata spent the entire morning relaxing in Okutama to escape the heat, then took the decorative-lettering documents home as a souvenir.
And just as he left, Hiyori arrived.
During the morning, Hiyori had gone to see the Dragon Witch.
She had gone to beat the Dragon Witch senseless for saying, "I finally made it back to Japan, but the luggage I was entrusted with in America all fell into the ocean during a storm. It was a tragic accident."
As if an excuse that childish would fly, you moron! Don't screw with me, you lizard bastard.
The terrifying debt collector, with a little blood still left on her, disappeared into the kitchen, saying she would make some snacks while she waited when I told her I wanted to upgrade Curanos.
Hiyori seemed to have discovered cooking recently, and she had started making something or other every time she came to visit. That's how I discovered that the snacks Hiyori made possessed a slightly inexplicable quality.
From watching her cook beside me, I could tell that her measurements were inaccurate and she didn't heat things thoroughly enough, yet eating the results somehow left me feeling all fluffy and light.
Even when I faithfully recreated Hiyori's recipes myself, the same effect never appeared.
I knew about the idea of putting love into cooking, and that food eaten together tasted better.
No, there was no way feelings could change how something tasted. That was just flattery or sycophancy! At least, that's what I'd thought. But could the change in taste caused by emotions, which I'd assumed was nothing more than an urban legend, actually exist...?
I was still only half convinced, but perhaps this feeling of becoming all fluffy when I ate it was the legendary "taste of Mom's cooking."
Thanks, Hiyori. I learned something new.
While Hiyori was cooking in the kitchen, I upgraded Curanos.
I added the curse mechanism so it interlocked tightly around the core-and-handle joint, where the backflow-prevention mechanism was located. Anyone who tried to remove it carelessly would damage the backflow-prevention mechanism, and an inept person poking around could even scratch the magic stone.
I carved six types of freezing magic into the surface of the handle, filled them with magical alloy, refined the details, and finished it with wax. I added a slight guidance function, control assistance, and increased power, so it should be more accurate, easier to handle, and stronger.
When I brought over the Curanos whose custom modifications I'd completed, Hiyori had just finished cooking and was arranging freshly baked plum cookies on a plate.
"Is it done? Mine just finished too. Let's eat together."
"Seeing you in an apron, standing in the kitchen, reminds me of the Spider Witch."
"Ngh! ...The Spider Witch had no ill intent. The Spider Witch had no ill intent. The Spider Witch had no ill intent... Phew, calm down, calm down..."
Hiyori took off her apron and sat down, muttering the spell over and over.
I can hear you. As if the Spider Witch could possibly have bad intentions. You don't find many people that kind—or spiders that kind, for that matter. It was a shame she had returned to her own district after Hiyori came back.
While devouring the cookies and savoring the taste of Mom's cooking, I handed Curanos to Hiyori. Magic flowed into the curse mechanism, and Curanos was instantly cloaked in white, freezing air.
Hmm. This looks good. In reality, it was only water vapor and dust in the air cooling down and appearing white, but it looked as though the staff were wrapped in a magical aura.
Anti-theft security: good. Coolness: good. I'd gone and done another fine job. I was completely satisfied.
I was getting the hang of using magical script, and, as expected, the Dragon Witch's punishment for trying to pilfer the Demon King's drops had also been taken care of.
Speaking of the Demon King, in a game, he'd be the final boss. What could I make with materials from the final boss?
I'd been looking forward to this for ages. I think I'll take my time working on it, savoring every last detail.