Chapter 94
The only person who ever doted on Yamagami Shoma, the family underachiever, was his great-grandfather, Yamagami Sho.
The illustrious Yamagami family of Tokyo's Kita Ward has been famed as a martial house for generations.
As a family trait, the Yamagamis possess exceptionally low innate mana capacity. The founder, Yamagami Sho, had only 0.2K, while his descendants have had around 0.2K to 0.6K, leaving them to start life with the weakest mana, utterly unable to use magic.
In exchange, however, the Yamagami family has an exceptionally high mana-training limit. The more they train, the more their mana grows, and reaching 200K is nothing unusual. Yamagami Sho reached 404K, setting the world's highest recorded mana capacity for a human—a record that remains unbroken to this day.
The Yamagami name is frequently seen in key positions throughout the Ministry of Defense. Professors in the Combat Department of Magic University are also relatives of the family, and whenever a Yamagami joins an expeditionary corps, they are welcomed with open arms and go on to achieve spectacular results.
The family could even be called a byword for outstanding mages in Tokyo.
Yamagami Sho, the founder of that great family, was said to have endured tremendous hardship in his youth.
Because his mana was so low, he had to quit his job and became an underachiever. It took immense effort and the support of many people for him to make a comeback.
At drinking parties, he invariably launched into long stories about his hardships during his time in the Guard Corps, the organization that preceded the Ministry of Defense. As his great-grandson, Shoma was often placed on his great-grandfather's lap and listened to those stories while drinking juice.
Shoma's mana capacity is 0.8K.
He had managed to increase it by only 0.6K from his initial 0.2K.
He was the family underachiever despite its extraordinary mana-training limit. Unable to use even a single spell, he was a disgrace to a prestigious family of mages.
His parents were deeply disappointed when they learned how poor Shoma's aptitude was.
His older brothers teased him for fun because of his low mana, and even his younger sister looked down on him. His grandparents never said anything outright, but their indifference showed in their behavior.
At the training grounds of his family home, he always had to keep to the sidelines and stay quiet. While envying his family as they fired off spells and honed their martial skills, he was made to spend day after day quietly performing only basic strength training. He had cried into his pillow, asking, Why am I the only one? more times than he could count on both hands.
Without his great-grandfather's warm encouragement, he surely would have become twisted and bitter.
His great-grandfather was the only member of the family who believed in Shoma.
That one day, he would surely bloom.
That he would find something he was good at.
That no matter how painful the present might be, if he kept moving forward without giving up, he would find his answer.
Whenever they met, his great-grandfather gave him sweets, cheerfully joined in his childish games, and sometimes even let him touch his well-worn sage's staff.
The great-grandfather who had doted on him died the month after writing Shoma a letter of recommendation for Magic University.
Shoma no longer had his great-grandfather's protection.
He had no choice but to carve out his own path.
Just as his great-grandfather had done.
Magic University has set 5.0K as its admissions cutoff.
Shoma's mana capacity was 0.8K, so under normal circumstances he would have been turned away at the gate. However, by submitting his great-grandfather's letter of recommendation along with a short thesis, he managed to slip in through the special admissions program.
Shoma had suffered terribly from his lack of mana throughout elementary and middle school and had tried everything he could to remedy it. Eventually, he accepted his limits and devoted himself to studying and honing his technical skills. While every other member of the family went on to the Combat Department of Tokyo Magic University, Shoma alone entered the Department of Gremlin Engineering.
Shoma wrote up a unique idea inspired by electrical appliances, a form of Lost Technology, and submitted it as a thesis, thereby having the mana-capacity requirement waived.
His great-grandfather had a habit of collecting electrical appliances, a common quirk among elderly people who had known the previous age. He would show Shoma his collection of Lost Technology relics, such as smartphones and computers, and teach him what they had once been used for.
Shoma's thesis had been heavily influenced by his great-grandfather. Though rudimentary, it was judged to have potential for further development, and from the moment he entered the university, he caught the eye of a professor in the Department of Gremlin Engineering.
But as they say, even foresight has its limits; the way he floundered after that was completely unexpected.
Shoma's grades in his classes were good.
However, the progress of his research was dismal. No matter how many times he repeated an experiment, he could not obtain the data he wanted, and his fabrication attempts failed one after another. Whenever he worked out a theoretical design, his professor pointed out that it was riddled with holes in every respect and sent him back to the drawing board yet again.
Even within the Department of Gremlin Engineering, Shoma became an underachiever.
Magic University is a four-year institution.
Students learn the basics in their first year, study applications and choose a specialization in their second, join a laboratory in their third, and write their graduation thesis in their fourth.
But Shoma had to repeat a year.
He had failed to submit his graduation thesis by the deadline.
The university had a strict policy of observing deadlines. "I'm going to be late, but please wait a little longer" was not accepted.
A graduation-thesis presentation entails planning everything so that the submission deadline can be met. "I couldn't make it" was not an excuse.
Fortunately, the professor in the Department of Gremlin Engineering had not abandoned Shoma.
Throughout his university career, the professor had relentlessly nitpicked his experiments and obsessively pointed out flaws in his theories to the point of bullying him. Even so, at the first faculty meeting of the new academic year, the professor promised to set aside special time for a research presentation.
Apparently, this came about because a flashy new student who had entered with great fanfare had pleaded with them. The faculty had decided to give a promising freshman a venue to present his work—and, while they were at it, give a chance to a repeat student whose future was in doubt.
This was a chance granted out of the professor's compassion. Shoma could not let it slip away.
His family had given up on his pathetic situation and was trying to place him in a job doing odd tasks at a family-affiliated weapons shop. Their reasoning was that continuing to disgrace himself at university without any achievements to his name was unacceptable, and Shoma had no argument against it.
He still could not forget the ordeal of asking his parents for permission to repeat the year, or the looks of utter exasperation on his brothers' faces. If his research presentation at the monthly faculty meeting went poorly, he would likely be forced to quit the university even in the middle of the semester and be pushed into some dead-end position.
Driven into a corner, Shoma was performing a final check on his Geometric Assembly Gremlin, loaded onto a cart in a warehouse at the edge of the courtyard, in preparation for the research presentation that afternoon.
He had practiced his presentation until he was sick of it. He had prepared for the question-and-answer session as well. All that remained was for the culmination of four years of sweat and tears to function normally, and everything would go well.
At least, it should have.
As Shoma nervously checked off items on the fifth sheet of his checklist inside the warehouse, a friend came to visit him.
"Hello, Shoma-kun. How are you doing?"
"Huh? Didn't you have a lecture this morning, Maya?"
Shoma was surprised at the unexpected sight of her.
Himori Maya was the younger sister of the fourth-generation Witch of Rekindling. She came from another prestigious family like Shoma's, and they had often met since childhood, so they knew each other well.
True to the Himori family, she was serious and sincere. She was also beautiful and had abundant mana. Entering as the top student one academic year below Shoma, she was a prodigy among their peers who was highly regarded by the professors.
Her sunny personality was so radiant that she could turn even her enrollment in the Department of Mutations—a nest of eccentrics—into a charming trait. She was the university's Madonna, and people said she would be certain to dominate the competition if she entered a beauty pageant.
Maya was often regarded as out of reach, but Shoma had never felt any distance between them. He had never once sensed contempt, disappointment, or pity for an underachiever from her.
They had known each other since childhood and often played together. She was like a younger sister to him.
When Shoma cocked his head at seeing his childhood friend, who should have been attending a lecture at that hour, Maya raised the trunk she was carrying to show him.
"I'm delivering something to President Ohinata at my family's request."
"Oh, right. I read in the newspaper that the Witch of Rekindling had returned. Is it related to that?"
"That's right. Things have been hectic lately, and it's been a lot to deal with. My older sister has been strangely cold toward the Witch of Rekindling-sama, too..."
As Maya sighed, the trunk she held gave a violent rattle, and Shoma blinked.
"Maya? What's inside that trunk?"
"...I can't tell you. I'm sorry. But apparently President Ohinata and the resurrected Witch of Rekindling-sama are scheduled to hold a meeting soon."
"Oh, really? Is it all right for you to be wasting time here?"
Shoma's voice tightened when he realized who was inside the trunk.
He did not want to interfere with his childhood friend while she was effectively escorting a person of importance.
But Maya smiled and lightly poked him in the side with her finger.
"Don't worry. If I went now, I'd be far too early. The Witch of Rekindling-sama even told me to prioritize my own schedule."
"Really? Well, if that's the case, then all right."
"What about you, Shoma-kun? Your presentation is this afternoon, right? How do you feel about it?"
"Who knows? I think I've prepared as thoroughly as I can. The theory is perfect, and the assembly went well. But I didn't have enough time for sufficient test runs, so I'm terrified that it might malfunction during the actual presentation."
"The new Geometric Assembly Gremlin, right?"
Shoma nodded as Maya examined the experimental prototype with interest, then explained it to her as practice for his presentation.
Geometric Assembly Gremlins were a long-established field, but Lost Technology had become a bottleneck, causing theoretical research to advance far ahead of practical work.
A Geometric Assembly Gremlin was both the discipline of precisely combining gremlins of diverse shapes and properties to create a single, meaningful gremlin structure, and the gremlin produced through that discipline.
This field of research had emerged from analyzing Demon King Gremlins discovered during the Demon Lord War. It was said that, taken to its logical extreme, it could lead to artificial intelligence and artificial magical life-forms.
It was a technology from an advanced magical civilization far beyond humanity on Earth, and analyzing and reproducing it would advance human magic by leaps and bounds.
However, research had been severely constrained when the regular dodecahedral fractal, one of the core components of a Geometric Assembly Gremlin, became Lost Technology.
Geometric Assembly Gremlins operated using regular dodecahedral fractals as capacitors.
A Geometric Assembly Gremlin that did not use a regular dodecahedral fractal would suffer a fatal defect in its output.
For example, the latest Geometric Assembly Gremlin communications device, completed ten years ago, used a fractal owned by the United States and another obtained from a Wand that had served as the winner's trophy at the Gushiken Memorial Horse Race.
These two devices, a pair each about the size of a house, linked America and Tokyo through real-time voice communications.
Humanity had resurrected one of the electrical appliances known as Lost Technology: the telephone.
However, there was no way to produce new regular dodecahedral fractals, which served as core components.
They could be obtained only by dismantling Demon King Gremlins and having the legendary artisan 0933 process the materials, but both possibilities were lost in the zombie panic eighty years ago.
Consequently, Gremlin communications devices could not be mass-produced, and only small improvements had been made to the one surviving pair.
Without a regular dodecahedral fractal, output was too low, and the maximum communication range was less than one meter.
Constructing a Geometric Assembly Gremlin without a regular dodecahedral fractal was extremely difficult.
Geometric Gremlins had something called an optimal volume. Once the overall size exceeded a certain volume, their amplification and conductivity decreased exponentially.
That optimal volume was 1,400 cubic centimeters, but current human fabrication technology could not fit the mechanism into something that small.
It had to be miniaturized to the size of a human brain, yet it inevitably grew larger than a cow.
Existing Geometric Assembly Gremlins inevitably exceeded the optimal volume, causing a drastic decline in overall functionality, while also leaving the core component unusable.
These two problems placed severe restrictions on the practical application of Geometric Assembly Gremlins, and in eighty years, the only thing that had taken concrete shape was a single pair of communications devices.
Shoma's research was based on a new theory of his own that skillfully circumvented the many limitations faced by Geometric Assembly Gremlins.
He had miniaturized the overall structure from the size of a cow to the size of a foal.
By using a repeating three-dimensional tessellation of regular tetrahedra and octahedra, he had reproduced an effect resembling that of a regular dodecahedral fractal, albeit in degraded form.
He had painstakingly inferred the intentions behind memoranda left by 0933 in the laboratory, compared them with dismantled parts from Demon King Gremlins, and repeatedly conducted experiments from the stage of designing the experimental methods themselves. This was the culmination of all that work.
Maya had listened intently to Shoma's explanation, nodding earnestly, then raised her hand with a serious expression and asked a question.
"How much time were you able to devote to this research?"
"Five years, if you include the basic theoretical design phase before I entered university."
"Thank you. I think it's wonderful research."
"I'm flattered... Hey, Maya, the professors aren't going to ask questions that easy, you know."
"It's fine, it's fine. That wasn't a professor's question; it was mine. Don't worry, you did great! I've watched you this whole time, so I know. You'll do it, Shoma-kun!"
“Really? Professor Dodo didn’t look happy about it at all, though.”
As Shoma imagined the face of the sinister professor from the Department of Gremlin Engineering, who frequently came to inspect his research, gave him meticulous instruction, and then left, he grimaced.
But Maya cheerfully assured him.
"Don't worry. You're Professor Dodo's favorite, Shoma-kun."
"What part of that makes me his favorite?! That guy is always nitpicking my research and picking at every flaw! He obsesses over the tiniest details, like he's searching every corner of a box!"
"It's because he likes you. Professor Dodo is busy, yet he checks your research in detail, finds its flaws, and points them out to you. Isn't that amazing? He's not free enough to spend that much time on every research student. Professor Dodo is definitely treating you specially. He expects great things from you. So you'll absolutely, absolutely be fine!"
Maya clenched a fist in front of her chest and encouraged him, "You can do it!" Then she took her trunk and disappeared into the university grounds.
Maya's encouragement eased much of his tension.
That's right. This was research he had spent five years on. Research he had advanced only after Professor Dodo had mercilessly torn it apart and made him revise it again and again. There was no way it would fail.
He probably needed to have more confidence. The facts he had built up and the knowledge he had accumulated would never betray him.
Shoma spent the morning inspecting everything, took his lunch break, then transported the prototype and equipment by cart into the conference room where the research presentations would be held.
After spending the afternoon lecture period on one final rehearsal, Shoma reached the moment of truth: the research presentation after classes.
The research presentations would be given alongside Isobe, a first-year student from a prestigious private integrated school. Each presenter had fifteen minutes, followed by five minutes of questions and answers.
If his presentation went well, he could make a career as a researcher.
If it went poorly, he would be dragged back home and treated as a useless hanger-on.
Shoma's future would be decided over the next twenty minutes.
The professors whose lectures had just ended began gathering in the conference room in twos and threes. Professor Dodo of the Department of Gremlin Engineering entered as well, then approached Shoma with a smirk and whispered in his ear.
"Hey. The Blue Witch is going to sit in on today's research presentations."
"Wh... What?! You never told me!"
"It's an unexpected drop-in. Apparently her partner took an interest in your research. She'll be listening to the presentation through projection magic in another room."
"Why are you telling me this?! You should have kept it to yourself! I'm nervous enough already, and now the Blue Witch is sitting in? This is too much! I mean, it's an honor, of course! Professor, are you enjoying making your students nervous?"
"Of course not. Have confidence. Be proud. You've completed research interesting enough that the Blue Witch wants to hear about it. My, my, it was worth taking you under my wing after all."
Professor Dodo went to his seat with a faint smirk, ignoring Shoma's protests.
The tension Maya had worked so hard to ease instantly shot past its critical point. Having come full circle, the excessive tension burst and shattered.
At this point, it was a do-or-die situation. Worrying about being rude or misspeaking was a trivial matter. He had no choice but to give it everything he had.
The task itself had not changed.
A promotion or a downfall. Only the distance between those two outcomes had grown.
When the time came, Shoma took a deep breath and began his presentation before the assembled, eminent professors.
He kept his brief self-introduction and opening remarks concise, then quickly moved on to the main topic.
"The device I developed――――"
Shoma closed his eyes and took another deep breath.
Then he opened his eyes and proudly presented the culmination of his research.
"――――can calculate 1 + 1. In other words, it is a mana-powered calculator."
The conference room erupted in an uproar.
Facing the commotion among the professors, Shoma smoothly explained the mechanism of the new Geometric Assembly Gremlin. The explanation he had practiced dozens of times came spilling from his mouth without conscious effort.
He explained the principles, then demonstrated an actual calculation of 1 + 1.
When he pressed the button, mana raced through the Geometric Assembly Gremlin—something Shoma, unable to control mana, could not perceive.
Then a flag bearing the number 2 rose.
The murmuring grew even louder.
"Thank you for listening. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Does anyone have any questions?"
When Shoma bowed and asked, nearly every professor in the conference room raised a hand.
The only one who did not raise a hand was Professor Dodo, sitting with his arms folded and looking thoroughly pleased.
Taken aback by a response that far exceeded his expectations, Shoma hesitated briefly before calling on the professor in the front row.
"Then... um, Professor Ishiya. Please go ahead."
"I'm Ishiya from the Department of Magical Medicine.
May I ask how you solved the mana-input problem? Even if you aren't using a regular dodecahedral fractal, I would think an input system using a mana ruler, which is also Lost Technology, couldn't be newly manufactured. If we assume new production becomes possible, wouldn't it ultimately be impossible to operate without a demonkin or an Ascendant?"
"Thank you for your question. Regarding that, please turn to page twelve of the handout. In the lower right is a diagram of the composite amulet mechanism; that mechanism serves as the mana input. Its charging speed is about one one-hundred-twentieth that of a mana ruler, but it does not require mana control for input. In principle, even if the mechanism were made more complex, it could accommodate manual circuit switching. Does that answer your question?"
"Thank you for the answer. I understand."
When Professor Ishiya nodded in satisfaction, another wave of hands shot up without a moment's pause.
Shoma handled the professors' questions and answers accurately, but five minutes was nowhere near enough time to respond to everyone.
There were still many questions, but his allotted time ended, and Shoma stepped down from the podium amid thunderous applause.
Relieved, he felt the strength drain from his body, and his hands began to tremble.
Wrapped in the warm euphoria of having done everything perfectly, Shoma sat down in the last chair in the conference room to listen to the presentation by the promising first-year student who followed him.
The second and final presenter, Isobe, a first-year student in the Department of Monster Studies, gave a presentation that was, frankly, painful to watch.
The order of the presentations had probably been a factor.
Coming after Shoma's tremendously well-received presentation, poor Isobe was so nervous he looked ready to cry, and he could barely get the words out.
Even from the perspective of a layman, the content of the presentation did not seem particularly impressive. It felt like something that was good for a first-year student, and no more.
Apparently Shoma was not the only one who felt that way, because Isobe was torn to shreds during the question-and-answer session.
"I apologize for the amateurish question, but..."
"I'm not well versed in this field, but..."
"I happen to be the one who wrote the paper you cited, but..."
He was crushed beneath a storm of devastating criticisms of flaws in his thesis, each launched from one of those opening phrases. Isobe descended from the podium unsteadily, drenched in cold sweat and clutching his chest as though in pain.
Seeing the pitiful first-year student, Shoma was chilled to the bone.
Without Professor Dodo's relentless nitpicking, Shoma would surely have ended up like that too.
The faculty council of Tokyo Magic University was a terrifying place. It was far too frightening.
The research presentations ended with Isobe stepping down from the podium.
The professors would continue into their monthly meeting, so Shoma left the room.
As he left the conference room with joy and relief mingling in his chest, a black-haired woman standing right beside him nearly stopped his heart.
That face he'd seen more times than he cared to count in illustrations in history textbooks.
The overtechnology magic Wand "Cuanos" in her hand.
There was no mistaking it: the Blue Witch herself was standing there.
The Blue Witch smiled at Shoma, whose mind had gone completely blank, and spoke.
"That was an excellent presentation. This is impertinent of me, but could I have a copy of your thesis? I would also like the raw experimental data, if you have it."
"Y-Yes! H-here you go...!"
Shoma presented the Blue Witch with the materials he had used for the presentation and the data he had brought just in case, all in one file.
His hands were trembling so badly that the papers were a mess, but the Blue Witch showed no concern and accepted them with a polite word of thanks.
"And one more message. He said, 'Nice work.'"
"Th-Thank you...?"
Shoma did not know who the message was from, but he was happy to receive the praise. Especially when those words had come from the Blue Witch herself.
Having finished her business, the Blue Witch left without ceremony.
As recognition for the culmination of his research, this was the best possible result.
Not only had he received thunderous applause from renowned professors, he had even been praised by a living legend.
Shoma was no longer the underachiever of the martial Yamagami family.
He was Yamagami Shoma, a researcher in Gremlin Engineering.
Shoma wiped the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes with his sleeve and felt the bright, open future with his entire being.
Then he began to walk.
He had a report to make at the grave of the great-grandfather who had believed in him.
He had good news to share with the childhood friend who had encouraged him.
After overcoming the bitter, painful days, a new stage in Yamagami Shoma's life began.