Chapter 82
There are times in this world when things happen at the worst possible moment.
It always seems to rain when you've forgotten your umbrella.
It always seems that there are no toilets nearby when you've got an upset stomach.
The earthquake that struck Tokyo on December 25, registering upper 5 on Japan's seismic intensity scale, was precisely one of those worst-possible moments.
Of all days, Christmas.
People carried away by the Christmas spirit did not end up trembling and panicking at the sudden disaster.
This was, of course, because the future-seeing mage had warned in advance that an upper-5 earthquake would strike around noon on December 25, but interestingly, the Pouch Sparrows kept in Tokyo had also predicted the earthquake.
Pouch Sparrows are trained monsters—in other words, magical beasts—with kangaroo-like storage pouches that can ignore weight and volume.
Because of their special ability, ease of care, and ease of breeding, they are raised all across Japan and play a major role as the backbone of the shipping industry. Their extremely high loyalty to their owners and the lovable charm of their chubby bodies also mean that many people keep them for reasons unrelated to their convenience.
That was why Pouch Sparrows were kept everywhere in Tokyo, but from the morning of the earthquake, they became restless and began busily cleaning up by stuffing the rocks, fallen trees, and metal they used as nest materials into their belly pouches.
After spending the entire morning restlessly fidgeting, the earthquake struck. Then, once it had ended, they calmly took the nest materials back out of their pouches and rebuilt their nests.
Apparently, this newly discovered earthquake-predicting ability made even more people fall in love with Pouch Sparrows.
According to the Department of Monster Studies, the Pouch Sparrows' ability to predict earthquakes was connected to their building ability.
Pouch Sparrows fly slowly and clumsily, and are weaker monsters than ordinary sparrows. In exchange for their weak bodies, they gather heavy, large, sturdy nest materials in their belly pouches and build tough nests.
However, because their building materials are so heavy and massive, if an earthquake comes and the nest collapses, the sparrows, chicks, and eggs inside will be crushed beneath it.
Thus, they probably developed an earthquake-predicting ability and the habit of temporarily removing their nests before an earthquake arrived in order to avoid such damage... or so the theory went.
It was only a hypothesis and speculation, so no one knew whether it was really true, but it had a convincing ring to it.
The Pouch Sparrows' unexpected ability eased the public's anxiety caused by the official announcement several days earlier that the future-seeing mage would be taking an indefinite leave of absence for recuperation. It gave people a sense of reassurance that things would somehow be all right even if the future-seeing mage left Tokyo.
The future-seeing mage was retiring and moving to the countryside, but publicly, it was being treated as an indefinite period of recuperation due to ill health.
This was a countermeasure against the bad guys lurking in Tokyo.
There were plenty of villains in Tokyo who behaved themselves only because the future-seeing mage kept a close watch on them. If he announced his retirement, they would start running wild.
That was why the official story was that he was taking temporary leave, leaving behind the pressure of not knowing when he might return.
The future-seeing mage's haggard appearance was famous, so no one questioned the need for recuperation.
And since he was a man who had collapsed repeatedly during major incidents but always returned, most people believed his recuperation would be temporary.
It looked like he could retire while leaving just the right amount of pressure on the bad guys.
Even so, there would probably be some troublemakers, but Tokyo was not so weak that it would fall apart unless the future-seeing mage did everything for it. Just look at how many crises of annihilation it had overcome so far.
The one who lost heart was neither Tokyo nor the future-seeing mage, but the Blue Witch.
Hiyori must have been really looking forward to the Christmas party with me, because after the earthquake canceled Christmas, she stayed gloomy for quite a while.
I was disappointed too. I had thought that, for the first time in my life, I might spend December 25 as Christmas rather than just another ordinary day.
But Christmas comes every year. I promised the dejected Hiyori that we would celebrate together next year, then devoted myself to cleaning up the workshop, which had been wrecked by the earthquake, and reinforcing it against earthquakes.
When the Dragon Witch destroyed my workshop many years ago, I had taken the opportunity to repair it and install iron plates in the walls. I had intended for them to help with defense, even if only a little, in case monsters attacked, but this time they nearly caused trouble instead. The seismic design had been inadequate, and the iron plates almost toppled toward me along with the collapsing wall.
I had come within a hair of being flattened. If I were merely buried under something, Fuyou would immediately rescue me with her roots, but if I were unlucky enough to have an important organ, like my head or heart, crushed and die instantly, there would be nothing anyone could do.
Neither the highest-grade healing magic scroll I kept at home nor the Mamonobasami I had stored away in case I nearly died from some unknown condition would be any use against instant death. Humanity still had not discovered resurrection magic, after all.
By the time I had finished cleaning up the workshop and reinforcing it against earthquakes, replaced the fallen and shattered roof tiles with intact ones from the ruins, repaired the waterwheel that had toppled over and broken, and restored everything damaged by the earthquake, it was already the end of January.
If earthquakes were bad at choosing their timing, Professor Ohinata was excellent at it.
The adorable stoat had tactfully refrained from asking me to handle any work until I had finished dealing with the mess.
Just as I was thinking that, now that the restoration from the earthquake was complete, I could return to reverse-engineering Demon King Gremlin, Professor Ohinata arrived and asked to use Demon King Gremlin along with the hot springs and springs of Okutama.
Apparently, he wanted to try some magic with Hiyori as the chanting assistant.
I nodded. I was willing to give permission, but I wanted to know why.
The three of us walked toward the ruins of a hot-spring inn near Okutama Station while I listened to the explanation. The stoat perched on Hiyori's shoulder explained the latest research in magical linguistics.
"This time, we'd like to check the conditions for what are commonly called 'dud spells.'"
"Spells that 'produce no effect' have been confirmed for some time now. They are spells that consume mana when cast but do nothing. For example, Witch of Gravel-san's magic does nothing if there is no Gremlin nearby. Since the conditions are not met, the spell fizzles."
"Ah, like fertility magic not working on stones, or healing magic not working on corpses?"
"Exactly. The Tobacco Witch-san had only two spells to begin with, yet both of them merely consumed enormous amounts of mana without producing any effect, so she had a very difficult time. Even now, we don't know what either spell actually does."
"That sounds rough."
It was like having your skill tree locked, right? Brutal.
But if their effects were ever identified, those spells would probably have one-of-a-kind special properties. I could say that had a certain romantic appeal only because I wasn't the one involved. Surviving the upheaval of the early days of the Gremlin disaster using nothing but physical strength, without magic, must have been quite a handicap. It was amazing that the witch survived.
"Through our journey around the world, we magical linguists acquired a huge number of spell samples. At the same time, our collection of dud-spell samples grew as well."
"So today, I was hoping we might be able to discover the conditions under which even one dud spell produces an effect."
"I see. Oh, here it is. Ah, ah, the sign has fallen down. Earthquakes, honestly."
We went around to the back of the hot-spring inn and entered the bathhouse through a broken window, avoiding the half-collapsed interior.
The hot spring, whose drains were clogged with leaves, mud, and boards from the collapsed ceiling, was still bubbling steadily out of the ground.
"Ao-san, please. Two spring spells."
"All right. And so, the spring learned the taste of its guardian."
Hiyori chanted the spell, but nothing happened apart from her voice echoing emptily.
"...Next. After a reunion spanning a thousand years, the guardian of the spring finally smiled."
She chanted another spell, but once again, nothing happened.
"Hmm, nothing's happening."
"It isn't. Was something supposed to happen?"
"No. I've already tried it at other springs, so I wasn't very hopeful. But Okutama is a special area with strangely few monsters, so I thought perhaps the springs here might work. Maybe it doesn't work on hot springs. Do you know where we could find an untouched cold spring?"
"I don't know of anywhere that hasn't been touched by human hands at all. But I might know of a spring that was developed once and then left unattended for decades."
"That will do. I'm sorry to make you walk around again, but could you show us the way a little longer?"
Following the professor's request, we trudged from spring to spring throughout Okutama.
But no dice!
Every spell fizzled, and none of the dud spells produced any special effect.
Back home, we tried another spell—not the one about springs—on the various disassembled parts of Demon King Gremlin, but that fizzled too. Nothing happened.
The whole trip had ended in wasted effort, and the professor, whose only result was learning that he had achieved no results, rested in the living room while nibbling on grilled rice crackers served on a small plate, looking a little disappointed.
"Tough luck, Professor. That spell sounded like it had so much to do with springs."
"The wording of a spell and its effect do not necessarily correspond. I know a glacier spell, for instance, but it can be used anywhere, regardless of location."
"True."
I nodded at Hiyori's words. The incantations of magical language were pretty hard to understand. They were generally poetic, but some of them were as woolly-headed as the Passing Flame spell.
"Hmm. Perhaps 'spring' is a person's name."
"Huh? That happens?"
"It does."
I had jumped in with a vehement "No way!" sort of retort, but the professor nodded so seriously that I faltered. Seriously, Professor?
"For example, you know the Sahara Desert, right? That's the name of a desert. But Sahara means 'desert' in Arabic, so Sahara Desert literally means Desert Desert."
"Huh."
Hiyori and I attended the professor's entertaining trivia lecture, nodding along in unison.
"There are other examples as well. The name of the one God in Christianity and Judaism is treated like a proper noun nowadays, but the original word is said to have meant 'that which is and is,' or 'existence itself.' It is common for an ordinary nickname or a word of definition to become a proper noun in the process of being translated into another language."
"Is that like how my Kyanos ultimately comes from the Greek word for 'blue'?"
"That is a very apt example. Precisely!"
The stoat gave Hiyori a tiny bow.
Even in the middle of a lecture, it was cute every single time. How did the students of magical linguistics manage to concentrate in class? Then again, perhaps they didn't.
"There are several suspicious words in magical language as well, when viewed from the perspective of the misunderstandings and changes that occur during translation. For example, we have confirmed two words translated as 'king': Tarquea and Donlour."
"Donlour is definitely a noun referring to an ordinary king, but Tarquea seems to be used more like a personal name. Perhaps Tarquea does not simply mean king, but is an honorific containing the personal name 'King Tarquea.'"
"Ah, that sounds possible. Very possible!"
"It certainly sounds possible, but is it really worth nodding that vigorously?"
"Come on, Hiyori. Have you ever heard a person's name appear in the Nameless Epic?"
"...No. Now that you mention it."
Hiyori seemed to search through her memories, but she shook her head. Neither had I.
That was strange. Could an epic really contain no personal names at all?
The oldest human story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is packed with names like Gilgamesh, Humbaba, and Enkidu, along with the names of countless gods.
The Iliad, one of ancient Greece's greatest masterpieces, is full of names that even ordinary people who know little about epics have at least heard of, like Achilles, Hector, and Apollo.
There are countless other epics around the world, such as The Song of the Nibelungs, the Mahabharata, and the Yukar, but not a single one deliberately avoids using personal names altogether.
"Rather than thinking that the Nameless Epic doesn't use any personal names at all, wouldn't it make more sense to think that one of the things that doesn't appear to be a personal name actually is one?"
"True."
"Of course, it is also possible that the customs of the magical civilization simply prohibit the use of proper nouns in epics."
"...That is also true. So which is it?"
"I don't know. The Nameless Epic seems to have a character in the role of a protagonist, but that character's position and affiliation clearly change several times during the story, and the way they are addressed changes along with them. As a result, many of the incantations do not make it clear whether they are referring to the same person..."
"Complicated. Though we also refer to the same person by two different names, 0933 and Dairi..."
"You mean me? But yeah, maybe it is something like that."
The Nameless Epic used a lot of clever turns of phrase. It was not written to explain its contents in a way that would be easy for people from Earth to understand. It was only natural that it was difficult to follow.
While I was approaching the magical civilization's super-technology through Demon King Gremlin, the linguistics researchers led by Professor Ohinata also seemed to be gradually approaching the truth of that civilization's culture and history through its incantations, one step at a time.
I wasn't conceited enough to think I could unravel every mystery of magic with my own hands, but I wanted to know at least the outline of the truth before my lifespan ran out. For that, I had to keep working. In moderation.