Magic Ink
Since we had decided that we were going to be making ink, Ferdinand began his lecture on brewing things.
“The ingredients one can acquire from fey creatures such as feyplants and feybeasts have elemental properties. Green is the color for Water, and the other elements likewise match the divine colors of the gods. You know all this already, I imagine?”
“Yes, it was taught during my first-year written classes,” I replied.
As Ferdinand had said, green was the color for Water. There was also blue for Fire, yellow for Wind, red for Earth, white for Life, black for Darkness, and gold for Light. First-years learned all this alongside the names of the gods, but I had known it even before then thanks to having read the bible. I imagined that most people knew it as a matter of course, considering its relation to the birth seasons.
“Correct,” Ferdinand said once I had given my full explanation. “Subsequently, the boons of the ingredients also connect to the gods.”
“This is second-year material, right?” I asked. “I learned it all while making textbooks.”
In regard to the elements, Water could provide healing, cleansing, and change; Fire could provide attack, amplification, and growth; Wind could provide defense, speed, and knowledge; and Earth could provide fortitude, resilience, and diffusion. The boons related to the specialties of their respective gods.
It had been written in textbooks that Earth could be mixed with any other element, so it was used to mix together elements that otherwise wouldn’t really merge well on their own. In contrast, Life generally backfired when mixed with any other element, so it was hard to use in combination.
As some additional trivia, in the same way that one person can contain several elements within themselves, some ingredients had multiple elements. It was easier to combine elements that generally weren’t compatible if one just used ingredients that contained both elements to begin with.
“Different ingredients have different mana capacities, which affects how much mana one can use while brewing with them. If you wish to acquire high-quality ingredients with many elements and a high mana capacity then you must gather from mana-rich fey creatures, as you know.”
I nodded, thinking back to the powerful feybeasts we had fought when making the jureve. I knew that feystone quality differed greatly depending on the strength of the defeated creature.
“The ink we are about to make will require ingredients with the elements and capacities necessary to fully absorb your mana. Consequently, as all magic ink is subordinate to the Goddess of Wisdom, it will need to primarily contain Wind,” Ferdinand said while rummaging through a box in search of something. Apparently, the brewing was going to be different from what was planned for the thread.
“We shall add an effect-amplifying blue ingredient to as mana-rich of a yellow ingredient as possible; then, we will add a red ingredient to raise its resistance...” Ferdinand continued in a mutter while lining up dried roots, powders, and liquids, none of which I recognized. I had no idea which elements each were nor what functions they served.
“Ferdinand, how can you tell which ingredient is which element?”
“Using this magic tool,” Ferdinand replied. He brought over a disc that was radially split into the colors of the elements, at the center of which was a mysterious metallic plate about five centimeters in diameter that shone with all seven colors. It also had concentric circles drawn at three-centimeter intervals from the center, making it look fairly similar to a dartboard. “You need only rest the ingredients on this. Give it a try.”
As instructed, I cut off a small part of the dried root and placed it on the disc-shaped magic tool. The instant the root touched the central plate, light started to fill the yellow part of the tool. At the same time, a small part of the blue portion shone as well.
“Eep! It started shining?! Um... So, does this mean the ingredient is strong with Wind and contains some Fire too?”
“Yes. One can also measure its mana capacity for each element based on how far the light travels,” Ferdinand explained. If the light stopped at the smallest circle, the ingredient didn’t have a sizable capacity for that element. But the farther the light stretched out beyond that point, the bigger its capacity was.
The fact that the yellow light had stretched almost to the very edge of the disc meant that the ingredient had an exceedingly large capacity for storing Wind mana.
“This is fun. So, what about this one?” I asked, reaching for some of the powder, but Ferdinand shot his hand out and grabbed my wrist to stop me.
“Wait, Rozemyne. The plate must be cleansed each time for the measurements to be accurate,” he said. “Take great, great care to remember this. You have a tendency to pay no heed to such details.”
Justus whipped out his schtappe and cleansed the central plate for us at once, and only then was it returned to the disc.
“Ferdinand, I wish to learn the cleansing spell,” I requested. “It seems convenient.”
“You already attempt to do too much on your own. You may entrust cleansing to your attendants; do not steal the work of those around you.”
“...Do you not do the cleansing yourself when you lock yourself up in your workshop experimenting?” I asked, puffing out my cheeks in protest. I seemed to recall Justus saying that even he hadn’t been able to get inside.
Ferdinand waved a hand, looking exceedingly annoyed. “All knights know the spell; have Damuel teach it to you later. We do not have time for it right now.”
“Erm, Lord Ferdinand. You want me to teach her?” Damuel asked, worried.
Ferdinand replied with a brisk nod. “She has only two guard knights with her now, and considering who the other is, it should be clear why it must be you.”
“Right. Damuel is amazing. He tutored me for my written classes,” Angelica said, her cheeks blushing with a hint of shyness as she praised him. At a glance, she came across as a young maiden whose heart had begun to throb for her tutor, but that wasn’t the case whatsoever; she was just doing her absolute best to avoid doing work she wasn’t good at.
Damuel had learned not to be fooled by Angelica’s picturesque expressions while tutoring her, and so he just sighed, saying not to worry and that he would take care of it.
“Ferdinand, what’s this liquid? Is it oil?” I asked, shaking one of the jars a little and watching as the thick liquid inside slopped around. If my suspicions were correct and it was of a particularly high quality, it might have been worth supplying the ink workshop with some.
“Yes. It is oil from a kurhaize feyplant,” Ferdinand replied.
“...Is kurhaize perhaps the evolved form of an eise plant?”
“It is, but how do you know of eises? As a first-year, you should have neither brewed nor gathered them, so why do you know of a feyplant that I cannot recall having taught you?”
Eise was one of the oils we had used back in my commoner days to make colored ink. Since kurhaize was its evolved form, it probably shared the same properties, if not also the same mana capacities.
“Eise is strong with Wind, isn’t it?”
“...What of it?”
“That must mean linseed is Fire, mische is Water, and pedgen is Earth, right?”
“I do not understand what you are getting at here. If there is something that you wish to say, be more direct in saying it,” Ferdinand insisted with a glare.
I went on to tell him about the colored ink the Gutenbergs had made in the ink workshop. The ingredients we had used hadn’t ended up producing the colors we had expected, and it was only after much struggling that we had managed to get a grip on things.
“I see. Those problems were no doubt being caused by the elements. We use the term ‘fey’ when speaking of things that have large quantities of mana and can provide feystones, but all things that live atop land suffused with mana contain mana, however slight the actual amount may be. Commoners are no exception, and this is exactly why contract magic uses blood, which contains the highest density of mana.”
“Oh, I see.”
In short, if we could give Heidi and the others a magic tool for investigating elements, their research would most likely progress much faster.
“Ferdinand, how much would this magic tool cost?” I asked.
“It is not for sale. If you want one, make it yourself.”
“Wait, so you made this one as well?! Then... make one for me too, please.”
“I refuse. It is exceedingly difficult to carefully match the quality of feystones, extract pure elements from them, and prepare for all the elements to react to such microscopic amounts of mana. I will teach you how to make one, but you must do it on your own,” Ferdinand said.
I decided to give up before I had even begun; anything complicated enough to warrant Ferdinand calling it ‘exceedingly difficult’ was almost guaranteed to be way beyond me. It would have been nice to have one, but ink research could still progress either way.
Sorry, Heidi. I don’t have it in me to make such a difficult magic tool.
“Still, regardless of how low-quality your ingredients were, it is impressive that commoners were able to perform successful research and produce such reliable results.”
“Eheheh. My Gutenbergs are something else,” I replied smugly.
“I am told that ink is to Heidi, the Gutenbergs’ ink craftsman, as books are to Lady Rozemyne,” Justus added with a small smile. “The Gutenbergs being raised by Lady Rozemyne are eccentrics who are all specialists in their respective fields.”
“I see...” Ferdinand murmured. “So there are many more Rozemynes, all with unique obsessions. Understood.”
...He just accepted that?!
“Enough chatter; let us begin making the ink. What we will be making now is a reproduction of the ink sold to commoner merchants for magic contracts,” Ferdinand said. It seemed that the ink Benno used for this purpose was made when a brewer moved their mana into a feystone and purified it of elements and colors, such that it would react even to the slight amount of mana in commoner blood.
“That seems surprisingly tedious,” I observed, and upon being told that we nobles didn’t need this ink since we could just write with magic tool pens, I suddenly realized something. “Can’t I just write on the cloth directly with a magic tool pen instead of using ink?”
“No. We want your mana to fill the cloth as much as possible to increase its effectiveness. The magic circle will not form if it is made with the same mana and ends up mixing together.”
The explanation didn’t make much sense to me, but it seemed that we needed to make highly viscous ink so that the mana wouldn’t mix together. At the same time, we needed the mana density of the ink to be higher than that of the cloth.
“I can’t say I really understand, so I’ll just follow your instructions.”
When it came to making magic ink, the fundamental process was the same as making a jureve—add the ingredients to the pot in a particular order and then stir thoroughly with a brewing stick. That said, unlike when we had made the jureve, I transformed my schtappe into a brewing utensil rather than using any brewing magic tools.
“Slice this into small pieces with a knife. You have learned to morph your schtappe, yes? I hope you have not already forgotten what you were taught in your lessons at the Royal Academy,” Ferdinand said with a sharp look.
“I remember them,” I replied, taking out my schtappe. “Messer.”
After morphing my schtappe into a knife, I started chopping the root into chunks as instructed. I had been a little nervous about trying to slice through such a dried-out root, but perhaps due to the fact I was actually cutting it with mana, there wasn’t much resistance. I started enthusiastically cutting away, only for Angelica to peer over with interest.
“You’re really good, considering this is your first time brewing.”
“Th-This is not my first time. I have helped Ferdinand before.”
“You help not just with the paperwork, but with brewing too? That’s amazing.”
I mean, I did help make the jureve. But I learned how to chop ingredients from cooking back on Earth and in the lower city.
I changed the subject with a laugh, but everyone who knew of my lower city origins collectively fixed me with a glare. Though he didn’t actually say it out loud, I was positive that Ferdinand was calling me a fool.
After chopping up the ingredients, I chanted “rucken” to cancel the transformation of my schtappe. From there, I began weighing the ingredients on a scale. Once they were all ready, we could start brewing.
“This brewing pot should do for today,” Ferdinand said, taking out a pot that looked similar to a small saucepan. “We will begin by putting in the highest-quality ingredients, which will serve as the base.”
“Right.”
I added the chopped-up root first of all; then, I chanted “beimen” to turn my schtappe into a mixing stick. Due to my previous experience brewing, I ended up making it even taller than myself, which prompted Ferdinand to rub his temples.
“You fool. A mixing stick that large would never work with a pot this small. Think of something shorter and easier to use.”
“Right...”
I recomposed myself and tried again, canceling the transformation with “rucken” and then morphing it into a mixing stick of an appropriate size for the small pot.
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
“I just need to put the next ingredient in when the first one melts, right?” I asked.
“Yes. Put the ingredients into the pot in this order,” Ferdinand said as he lined them up on the work table. After the root that would serve as the base, I poured in the kurhaize oil and stirred it into the mix. From there, I would be adding the blue powder to amplify the mana in the ink, and then a bit of the red liquid to secure the ink to the cloth. Last was the golden powder obtained from overfilling feystones with mana, which was going to be used to increase the mana density.
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Whether due to the quality of the ingredients or the increased efficiency of using a schtappe as a mixing stick, the chopped-up root dissolved pretty quickly. I poured in the kurhaize and resumed mixing.
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
I mixed in the blue powder, stirred even more, dumped in the liquid, and then continued on stirring. I could feel a surprising amount of my mana being drained.
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
“Ferdinand, I’m starting to get tired even with enhancement magic...”
“It is almost ready. You are the one who insisted on making ink, so see it through to the end,” Ferdinand replied. A beat later, the surface of the concoction flashed with light.
“Was that it?”
“No, there is one more step. This powder was made with your mana; it should do well to increase the mana density.”
I mixed in the golden dust as instructed and continued to stir until the surface of the liquid flashed again.
“Now it is done,” Ferdinand said. “Transfer the liquid into this jar. Take care not to spill any.”
As per his instructions, I started moving the finished ink, which had ended up just as blue as the kind Benno used for magic contracts. My excitement for my homemade ink was shooting up.
“Ferdinand, can I try writing with it?” I asked.
“Yes. We want to see just how much it bleeds.”
I momentarily exited my workshop to ask Fran whether he had any spare cloth we could use for experimental writing. There wasn’t any that we could freely waste, so to speak, but he brought some at once when I requested something that could also be used as a rag.
I returned to my workshop and spread the cloth over my work desk; then, I tried drawing a line with the newly made ink. It appeared just fine—in fact, it was shockingly clean. I observed it for a while, and not only did the ink not bleed at all, but it actually puffed up a little on the line. It was like a trail left by one of the especially wet markers I had used back in my Urano days.
“What in the world...?” Ferdinand remarked.
“It’s not bleeding in the slightest. Seems like we won’t need a resisting agent after all...” All the thoughts in my head of asking Lutz to prepare pliable wax for resist-dyeing, of making wax on my own, and of possibly developing my own rice paste all vanished into the mist at once.
“It is too early to say that. We will only know for sure once we have tried it on cloth infused with your mana,” Ferdinand said, his brows knit in a hard frown as he stared at the line.
“Why do you look so dissatisfied...?”
“I am not dissatisfied; I am simply confused, as we seem to have created something other than what I expected.”
I would have considered my newly made ink a success as long as the puffy line didn’t break off over time, but Ferdinand didn’t seem the slightest bit convinced.
“Rozemyne, dye this cloth with your mana. I wish to see whether the ink will function similarly with mana-dyed cloth.”
“I used up quite a bit of my mana making the ink, so I am rather tired,” I replied. As far as I was concerned, we had achieved what we needed to and it was time for us to move on. This must have been clear on my face because Ferdinand gave me a look tinged with concern. It was only momentary, however, and vanished as he raised an eyebrow at me.
“Then drink this potion. Your mana will recover speedily.”
“On second thought, I can do it. I’m doing it!” I declared. Pushing myself a little harder was vastly superior to suffering another dose of that ultra-nasty potion.
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
Stir, stir, stir, stir...
I continued to stir while Ferdinand threw one ingredient after another into the pot. He eventually added the red liquid, which made the surface of the concoction flash, and then took out and cut in half an experimental piece of cloth. He dipped one of the halves into the pot, and it sucked up the liquid inside in an instant.
“Eek?!”
But despite having sucked up the liquid, the cloth didn’t change color, nor did it appear at all wet. It looked exactly the same as the cloth we had just drawn a line on.
“It doesn’t seem any different... Is it really dyed with my mana now?”
“Yes. A touch should clear your doubts.”
I gripped the cloth and then let out a “Wow!” No sooner had I touched it than it had started to shine faintly.
“It reacts to your mana the most because that is what it is dyed with. Of course, it will react to the mana of others as well. Dyeing cloth in such a fashion makes it easier for one’s mana to flow through the embroidery, which in turn makes it more effective.”
“Neat.”
It seemed that dyeing cloth with mana wasn’t too hard in itself. Both Angelica and Damuel had apparently done it with their capes at one point.
“Now, see if that ink still works,” Ferdinand said.
At his instruction, I drew the same line as before. The ink swelled up over time, much like it had done before, and drawing on it felt exactly like drawing on ordinary cloth.
“...Seems like it’s fine.”
“But why?” Ferdinand asked, taking the pen from me in sheer confusion and drawing a line with his own mana. His line seemed to break apart at the edges, and the ink didn’t swell very much.
“It seems like the ink bleeds when you draw with it, Ferdinand. I wonder why?”
“I do not know. Here, Eckhart. You try.”
“Yes, sir!” Eckhart said. He drew a similar line, but his bled far more and didn’t swell at all. He then handed the pen to Justus, who was eager to try it for himself, but Justus’s line bled as well. In fact, it seemed to bleed more than Eckhart’s had.
By this point, Ferdinand had progressed from a furrowed brow to a full-on frown. “Angelica, Damuel. I want the both of you to try as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
My two guard knights were the next ones to try, and their lines continued the trend by bleeding even more than anyone else’s thus far. The one that Damuel drew was the absolute worst—it looked as though he had just spilled ink over the cloth.
“Is it perhaps based on the quantity of the writer’s mana?” I suggested.
“Or perhaps its elements and qualities... I must do further research to be sure. Rozemyne, may I have this ink?” Ferdinand asked, his “mad scientist” switch now entirely in the “on” position. The ingredients had been his in the first place, and as long as it didn’t interfere with his life too much, I saw no reason to oppose him locking himself away in his workshop for a while.
“You may, if you promise to research only after eating and to have left your workshop by third bell tomorrow,” I said. Ferdinand glared at me with annoyance, but I wasn’t about to spend every morning waiting to get called over to drag him out from his workshop. I would protect my reading time to the full extent of my abilities.
“Very well,” he conceded. “Justus, have the attendants prepare food. I will finish what work I can before then. And... Damuel. I will entrust cleaning up here to you.”
“Sir?!”
Leaving Damuel to his confusion, Ferdinand took the bottle of ink and promptly exited with Justus and Eckhart.
“But why me...?” Damuel asked, still dumbfounded.
“Probably because Angelica would end up breaking everything,” I suggested.
“Professor Hirschur did always yell at me about that, but why does Lord Ferdinand know that?” Angelica asked. I returned an awkward smile, not wanting to reveal that anyone could have guessed it simply by watching her for a day, and then looked at Damuel.
“He must want you to teach me cleansing magic now as well.”
“Ah, true. That is possible.”
And so, Damuel taught me the cleansing spell while we were in the workshop. It wasn’t complicated at all; I merely had to take out my schtappe and chant “waschen” while infusing it with mana.
“It takes an extraordinary amount of mana if you don’t have Water, but you need not even consider that manner of problem,” Damuel said with a headshake. It seemed that he had struggled to cleanse things at all in the past, although his increased mana quantity meant he now found it much less troublesome.
“I suppose I will clean all these implements at once,” I said, eyeing the work table while infusing my schtappe with mana. I then shouted, “Waschen!” and in an instant, the entire workshop was flooded with water. The sudden currents swept me up from the floor and spun me around such that I could no longer tell up from down. My eyes opened wide, and while I was quite literally drowning in my confusion, the water suddenly vanished.
Gravity suddenly dragged my once floating body back down to the floor, where Damuel was conveniently placed to break my fall. He had also been sucked into the torrents and ended up lying on his back.
“Guh!” Damuel grunted as I slammed down onto his stomach. The fact that he still mustered a polite “Are you hurt?” between violent coughs was yet another reminder that he was a paragon of virtuous guard knights.
“Cough, cough!”
Angelica was also spluttering as she recovered from the sudden water attack, and she was blinking rapidly in surprise. The water had already gone, and we were all bone dry, but the sensation of having been drowning remained. I had experienced it myself not too long ago.
“Lady Rozemyne, why did you summon that much water?” Damuel asked. I averted my gaze as I rested my body against his, not wanting to meet his exhausted glare.
“Only now do I understand the extent to which the quantity of mana used will change the amount of water,” I said. “I will take more care in the future.”
May cleansing magic be feared...
“Rozemyne. Apologies, but if you have no plans this afternoon, would you mind my visiting your workshop?” Ferdinand asked when I went to assist him with paperwork the next day.
“What?”
It seemed he had spent the previous evening locked in his workshop, experimenting with using the ink on all sorts of papers, cloth, and wood, only to learn that all of the lines had disappeared when he later awoke from a nap. My appreciation for him having kept his promise by leaving his workshop at third bell faded rapidly. In actuality, he had been impatiently waiting to see what had happened with the line on the cloth we had left in my workshop.
“The ink disappears? I don’t mind you visiting my workshop, but... if it really is gone, won’t it be unusable?”
“If the ink is unusable, you need only cease your futile struggling and embroider the circles like everyone else. It will not be an issue in the least.”
But I made the ink specifically because I don’t want to do that! How can you be so mean?!
And so, I started making my way to my workshop with Ferdinand, my reading time having been stolen away from me once again. It was sad to lose it, although I had to admit, I was also quite curious about the ink.
We entered my workshop, which was clean from the incident the day before, and Damuel took out the box containing the cloth we had all drawn on. The cloth he took out, however, had absolutely nothing written on it—not my line, nor anybody else’s.
“It really did vanish...” Damuel observed.
Nooo! Now I have to embroider it... This is going to take forever...
Feeling defeated and depressed, I went to take the cloth. The very instant my fingers touched it, however, it started to shine. All the lines that everyone had drawn suddenly reappeared, bleeding and all.
“What in the world is going on? This is unbelievable,” Ferdinand muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring at the cloth. I spread it out for everyone to see and shrugged.
“If not even you can understand it, Ferdinand, then I certainly won’t be able to,” I said. Everyone else nodded in agreement.
“If not even Lord Ferdinand touching it brought any change, the lines must only appear in response to Lady Rozemyne’s mana,” Justus said, looking equally as intrigued as Ferdinand as he eyed the cloth. “Lady Rozemyne, may I borrow it for a moment?”
I gave the cloth to Justus, and the lines faded away. I touched it again, and they reappeared.
“Will they also respond to feystones filled with your mana, I wonder?” Ferdinand mused aloud. “If so, the ink is still usable. Although it will mean that only you can draw a usable magic circle with it. Still, how in the world does this work...?”
“Ferdinand, might I suggest you perform any further experiments with ink made with your own mana? It would only slow you down to constantly ask for my help, would it not?”
It was Ferdinand who had prepared the brewing ingredients and measured their quantities in the first place; he could make his own ink and experiment as much as he wanted. If my ink could make functioning magic circles, I didn’t care about anything else.
“A good point. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
And with that, Ferdinand promptly exited my workshop.
Yeah, that’s right. Get outta here. I’m not gonna hang around a mad scientist forever.
I started reading as per my initial schedule. My plan was to tell the Gilberta Company about resist-dyeing, since I had gone out of my way to remember it. It wasn’t something that I expected to have much use for personally, but maybe it would help Mom, who was a dyer by trade.
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