Chapter 97
Eighty years can change things you never would have expected. The changes to the national holidays are one of the more amusing examples.
For instance, February 6 is the day the American envoys—the Black Ships—came to Japan.
When a ceremony was held to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States, February 6 was designated a national holiday called "Friendship Day."
Meanwhile, Constitution Memorial Day, which was originally May 3, was moved to May 21 to match the date the new constitution came into effect after the Gremlin Disaster.
So today is a holiday.
Also, with the guaranteed three-day holiday weekends falling apart, Golden Week has become a dead term that kids these days don't know. How sad.
I'm self-employed, so I can work whenever I want and take time off whenever I want.
The holiday doesn't really matter to me, but it does make me feel like taking the day off for no particular reason.
Contrary to my leisurely mood, Hiyori has spent the past few days practicing by the river every day, working so hard that steam is practically coming out of her head as she gets used to the new-model Cureanos.
I don't understand what controlling mana feels like, but apparently the jump in difficulty is like going from operating by Morse code to suddenly being required to use a keyboard.
Hiyori spent eighty years becoming completely accustomed to the old-model Cureanos's incantationless mechanism, and she can tap out Morse code at incredible speed. But she's a complete novice at keyboard operation. Since she understands Roman letters, she can type in romaji, but her input speed has become painfully slow, like typing "tap... tap... ta... tap..." with one finger.
In other words, compared to when she used the old-model Cureanos, the speed of her incantationless spellcasting has plummeted.
Hiyori considers this a serious problem, so she's working hard to get used to the new-model Cureanos as quickly as possible and increase her incantationless spellcasting speed.
Her input speed has temporarily dropped, but high-speed keyboard input is faster than even the world's fastest Morse-code input. Once she gets used to it, it should be a revolutionary power-up. I hope Hiyori keeps at it.
Since it's a matter of getting used to it, I can't offer her any advice.
But I can cheer her on.
I'm a smart man, so I asked Hiyori, "I want to cheer you on. I want to make you a snack to eat during your breaks, so is there any food you like?" and successfully learned that she likes chocolate mousse. On the other hand, the fact that I didn't know a single one of Hiyori's favorite foods until now is absurdly ignorant of me. Well, I can learn them from here on out.
Chocolate, which was more valuable than the same amount of magic alloy eighty years ago, can now be bought normally, though it's still expensive.
I made a rich, smooth chocolate mousse cake—a whole cake—to arrive around snack time, promised the covetous Mokutan I'd make her a completely charred fruitcake later, and headed out for the delivery. Uber Dairi, at your service.
It takes about three minutes to walk from my house to the riverbank where Hiyori practices, but the moment I left the house, I spotted a huge Spider Witch half-hidden in the bushes and broke into a grin.
Long time no see! How have you been?
"Hello, Spider Witch. You've gotten quite a bit bigger since I last saw you! Is it your growth spurt?"
"Uu... D-Dairi. It's been a while..."
When I called out to her, the Spider Witch fidgeted her way out of the bushes, where she had failed to hide herself at all, revealing the full magnificence of her form.
The Spider Witch was a couple of sizes bigger than before, which alone was enough to get me excited. Spiders and beavers can never be too big, after all. I remember a comic I saw online ages ago about a hundred-meter-long beaver building a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar. It was hilarious. I hope the Spider Witch aims for a length of around a hundred meters too.
"It seems you did a lot for me while I was dead. Thank you. I'm on my way to deliver a cake to Hiyori. Would you like to come along?"
"Uh... um, well... s-sorry, Dairi. Because I... because I was controlled by Iruma, you... y-you died...!"
"Oh, it's fine. I came back to life. Anyway, Hiyori's by the riverbank. What do you want to do? Was it hard for you to meet Hiyori, Spider Witch?"
I had only asked normally, but the Spider Witch started shedding tears from all seven of her compound eyes.
This was so unexpected that it scared me. Why?! Did she hate meeting Hiyori so much that she cried?!
Did she really dislike it that much?! Oh no, oh no! I think I said something I shouldn't have!
"S-sorry. I didn't realize Hiyori made you that uncomfortable."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry... That's not it. It's because you're acting so much like your usual self, Dairi. Because you're treating me like you always do... Even though this happened because of me..."
"Huh...?"
She explained why she was crying through her sobs, but even after hearing her explanation, I still couldn't understand the reason for her tears and tilted my head.
Hmm. So, basically, she's saying she's glad I'm acting like normal. Was she afraid the resurrection had gone wrong?
There are zombie spells and the like, after all. If the Spider Witch had died, come back, and turned into a mindless zombie that only groaned "uhh" and "aah," I might cry too. If that's what scared her into crying, then I can understand. I see.
"As you can see, I'm perfectly healthy, so there's no need to worry. I even got vaccinated against Shadow Loss Disease. I'm full of life. Sorry for making you worry."
"Yeah... yeah... Thank goodness. Thank goodness..."
The Spider Witch cried for a while, but eventually she seemed to have cried herself out and felt better. When I brought up the subject again, she said she'd come along to cheer Hiyori on, so I let her carry me on her back down to the riverbank. The giant Spider Witch's dorsal spines had grown huge as well, making for a reassuring backrest.
Do you think she'd wear a saddle if I made one for riding? No, would treating her that blatantly like a vehicle be insulting? Or would she simply equip it the way someone puts on clothes? Hmm, hmm. I have no idea.
Hiyori spotted Spider Rider Dairi coming down to the riverbank, stopped training, and smiled at the Spider Witch.
"Were you able to find the courage?"
"Yes. I'm glad I got to talk to you one more time. Thank you for giving me the push I needed..."
"No, thank you. Thank you for protecting Dairi all this time."
The two exchanged words, and the mood turned peaceful.
Hmm? What's this warm, fuzzy atmosphere? Could it be that the Spider Witch and Hiyori are close?
I'm starting to understand these sorts of subtleties too. The terrifying speed at which my social skills are growing is frankly frightening, even to me.
"Oh, right. Spider, would you like some cake too? I made it for Hiyori, but a whole cake is too much."
"Ngh... I'll pass... You two eat it together..."
"Ah, right. You're a carnivore."
The Spider Witch glanced at Hiyori for a moment, then modestly declined. What a shame. Next time, I'll make a cake that Spider can eat too. Meat cake? No, maybe a meat pie.
As I ate chocolate mousse cake with Hiyori, the topic turned to resurrection magic.
I had died right here on this riverbank and come back to life right here. I vaguely remember hearing the resurrection incantation, but what kind of magic had it actually been? It wasn't a pseudo-resurrection that would kill me instantly if I got hit with dispel magic like the kind Iruma used, was it?
When I asked, suddenly worried about something I should have worried about long ago, Hiyori gave me her firm assurance of safety while cutting pieces off the whole cake with a fork.
"Dairi has been completely resurrected. Healing magic works on him, and nothing happens when he is hit with dispel magic. The resurrection mage said they had resurrected the same person twice before, and apparently that had caused no problems either."
"Oh. So I can die as much as I want?"
"......I know you don't consider your own death particularly important, Dairi. But don't assume that I or the Spider Witch feel the same way."
"Oh. I'm... sorry?"
"Be careful. Resurrection magic has limitations too."
According to Hiyori, resurrection magic first of all consumes a huge amount of mana.
But a Transcendent can cover that cost.
The problem lay in the additional cost.
The vampire self-enhancement spell consumes blood as an additional cost, on top of mana.
The additional cost for the Pebble Golem spell is Gremlins.
And the additional cost for resurrection magic is ghost Gremlins.
You obtain a large ghost Gremlin by defeating a ghost-type monster—roughly a top-tier Otsu-class monster or a Kou-class one—with exorcism magic. Resurrection magic only takes effect once that ghost Gremlin is consumed.
Small ghost Gremlins from minor ghosts don't generate enough mana and end up fizzling, apparently.
With ordinary Gremlins, methods for using demon beasts to fatten and mass-produce them have been established, but ghost-type monsters have yet to be tamed or farmed. They can only be obtained as naturally occurring wild specimens, and even then, small ones are useless.
My resurrection had come at no small cost.
S-sorry. I really said, "So I can just die as much as I want!" Resurrection is expensive, huh?
"So when you said you'd promised to pay the price for learning resurrection magic, you meant you'd deliver ghost Gremlins. I see."
"Ah... well..."
The story I'd heard before finally made sense, and I was satisfied, but Hiyori grew evasive.
Huh? Is that wrong? Is that not what you meant?
Hiyori's gaze wandered for a while, but eventually she spoke as if she'd resigned herself.
"The resurrection mage is a witch from the Kingdom of Rus. In exchange for teaching me resurrection magic, I promised to investigate Quodenets."
"Investigate what now?"
"The Kingdom of Rus is a country in the former Russian territories, right? A fairly isolated landlocked nation. Its population was around six hundred thousand, I think... Quodenets is new to me too..."
The knowledgeable Spider Witch offered additional information, but apparently even she didn't know one of the words. Well, now we're both clueless.
Hiyori! Explain!
The Spider Witch and I urged her to continue with our eyes, and Hiyori reluctantly explained, looking guilty.
"Don't spread what I'm about to tell you around too much, okay?"
"The Kingdom of Rus has an artifact called Quodenets. The kingdom prospered around Quodenets after the Gremlin Disaster."
"Quodenets is a word in the local language that means something like 'magic sword,' but from what I saw, it felt more like a spear or a staff. Quodenets fell from the sky on the night the Shantak meteor shower rained down and lodged itself in Russian soil."
"Quodenets forms an imperceptible defensive zone with a radius of about ten kilometers around it. Any monster or demonfolk that enters this defensive zone turns to dust. It's a magical death. There are no exceptions. It also intercepts aerial targets."
"Since Transcendents can pass through, the only beings inside the defensive zone are humans and Transcendents. It's a safe zone where monsters neither enter nor appear."
"That's amazing. Isn't it insane? It's like a superior version of the Octameteorite."
It's only a theory, but when the Octameteorite was still alive and well, it apparently maintained something like a monster-defense barrier around Okutama. Weak Class Hei monsters could pass right through, and it ignored the Fire Lizard and Fuyou too, so it was a fairly lax defensive zone by some mysterious standard.
Even so, thanks to it, I survived the early days of the Gremlin Disaster without being attacked by the powerful monsters that should naturally have come after me.
Quodenets repels monsters even more strictly and powerfully than the Octameteorite. It's strong.
"That's right. Its defensive range seems to be about the same as the Octameteorite's, but you can consider it a superior version. The existence of Quodenets is a state secret. I wasn't even told it existed until I saved the Kingdom of Rus from a crisis."
"A few years ago, something abnormal began happening to Quodenets, which is both a state secret and the foundation of the nation."
"Quodenets is the culmination of extraordinarily advanced magical technology. It can't be analyzed by ordinary means. So, in exchange for learning resurrection magic, I promised to take the peerless artisan 0933, who managed to analyze the Demon King Gremlin, to the Kingdom of Rus and have 0933 determine the cause of the anomaly."
Hiyori finished speaking and fell silent.
The Spider Witch and I fell silent too.
Um...?
To sum it up, this Kingdom of Rus has a terrifying artifact that seems to combine the Octameteorite and the Demon King Gremlin.
And in return for being brought back to life, I have to analyze it.
Have I got that right?
I raised my hand to ask a question.
"Can't they bring Quodenets to Okutama? That would be easiest."
They had the Demon King Gremlin shipped in for analysis, after all.
I want Quodenets shipped in too. It sounds extremely interesting.
Hiyori shook her head at my question—or rather, my request.
"Impossible. It's a state secret, remember? Besides, it can't be moved even if they tried, and even if it could, they couldn't move the six hundred thousand people protected by Quodenets."
"Ah..."
True. If they could mail Quodenets to Okutama, the Kingdom of Rus would lose its protection and everyone would die. Yeah, that wouldn't work.
While I nodded in understanding, the Spider Witch raised a foreleg and asked a question too.
"Is it really okay for us to be taking it this easy...? Something abnormal is happening, right? Don't we need to hurry to the Kingdom of Rus...?"
"There is no precedent for resurrecting someone who has been dead for eighty years. Under the pretext of allowing you to recuperate after resurrection and persuading 0933, I've secured a three-year grace period."
"The anomaly didn't start yesterday or today. We don't know its cause, and we don't know what will happen if we leave it alone, but the situation isn't progressing fast enough for waiting a month or two to make a difference."
"I see..."
The Spider Witch nodded, apparently satisfied.
Hmm.
Quodenets sounds pretty interesting, and if it's the culmination of advanced magical technology, the technology we could obtain through reverse engineering it would probably be substantial, just as it was with the Demon King Gremlin. I definitely want to go investigate it.
Fortunately, there's no need to hurry. It sounds like I should take it easy in Tokyo for a while, acquire as much as I can from what Tokyo has to offer, and then have Hiyori figure out a way for us to travel to the Kingdom of Rus without meeting anyone.
"Okay. I'll be in Tokyo for a while longer, but once I've taken care of everything I need and want to do, let's go to the Kingdom of Rus."
"Are you sure? I assumed you didn't want to leave Okutama, Dairi..."
"It's just a trip, right? If it isn't like I'll never come back, I don't mind."
Hiyori looked relieved by my answer.
I tend to live as a shut-in, but I can go out too, you know?
I take walks, work in the fields outside, and go into the mountains or fishing.
Besides, I moved all the way from my hometown of Aichi to Okutama by myself, so it's not as if I'm averse to moving around. Traveling overseas is totally fine too. Hiyori just has to escort me while avoiding people as much as possible.
"So what kind of thing is this Quodenets? You called it a magic sword, a staff, and a spear, but it's the culmination of advanced magical technology, right?"
When I asked out of curiosity, Hiyori answered as she dredged up her memories.
"If I had to compare it to a staff, it would be like the core and the upper half of the shaft sticking out aboveground, while the lower half is driven into the earth and puts down roots. According to the local scholars, the shape of the core is... What was it again? Oh, right. They said it was a regular 24-cell."
"What? A regular 24-cell? Are you serious?!"
I was so stunned by the incredible term that I recoiled.
That's a four-dimensional geometric structure!!!!
Hey! What the hell is going on?!
A four-dimensional structure?!
The Demon King Gremlin is a three-dimensional structure, though?!
Does that mean Quodenets is one dimension higher than the Demon King Gremlin?! Literally?!
"This is way too insane. I'm starting to lose confidence that I can analyze it."
"I-Is it really that incredible? But if you can't analyze it, no one else could."
"No, that's not... Actually, yeah, it is. Guess I'll have to do it."
I'd thought the Demon King Gremlin was the pinnacle of magical technology, but I suppose there's always a higher peak.
Now I'm getting seriously excited about going to the Kingdom of Rus.
But first, I need to establish a foundation. If Quodenets is a higher-level technology than the Demon King Gremlin, I probably won't be able to do a thing to Quodenets until I at least finish taking the Demon King Gremlin apart.
Good grief, the world is a big place.
I feel like I finally understand how all the craftsmen, engineers, and scholars of the world who were intimidated by 0933's super-technology must have felt. So this is what it's like.
But being intimidated has annoyed me, so I'll mess with Yamagami-san and feel better.
I'll send Yamagami-san a brand-new geometric solid Gremlin, a Sierpinski icosahedron. Apparently he was so shocked by the previous five regular dodecahedron fractals that he went weak at the knees and couldn't stand, so this time I'm aiming to make him faint.
Quodenets scares me, and I scare Yamagami-san. Perfect flow. All right!