Fairy Training
Satou here. When I played games, I could hardly ever bring myself to use max-recovery potions. It must be because of that time I used them all up on the last boss only to get my ass handed to me when the boss turned out to have a second phase.
“I’m not done yeeet?”
“Quite a skilled fighter, aren’t you? You lack a bit of attack power, but you make up for it with tremendous spatial awareness.”
Shishitouya the samurai elf, or Shiya for short, fended off Tama’s short sword and shield easily as he gave her advice.
We were at an elf training ground near the edge of the Bolenan Forest, bordering monster territory.
It had already been about five days since the events in the public bathhouse; since then, the elves had been instructing my party and me at this training ground.
Today we were having one-on-one matches with our trainers, but most days we just did practice combat.
Our opponents on those days were dummies the elves magically constructed out of grass, mud, and so on.
On days when we practiced against monsters, the hunting master Hishirotoya and I would go out into the monster territory outside the forest and bring back enemies.
The only options in that territory were two extremes: The monsters were all either less than level 10 or higher than level 40.
“Take this, ma’am!”
“Good charge, but pay more attention to your surroundings. If there had been a trap in the grass between us, you’d already be caught.”
Pochi, who was holding a one-handed sword with both her small hands, was sparring with the curly-haired Portomea, or Miss Poa.
“I eat traps for breakfast, ma’am!”
“Don’t be a fool! Minus one point.”
Poa emphasized her scolding with a smack from the paper fan in her hand, one of Arisa’s latest works.
“Aren’t you the real fool for calling me a fool, ma’am?”
“Oh, be quiet. You must mind your teacher’s words. If I tell you to give me your hamburg steak, you have to do it, even if you’re hungry!”
At this shocking declaration, Pochi turned pale and teary-eyed.
Seeing this, Poa hastily corrected herself.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that about the steak. If it was a rice ball, maybe.”
“All right, ma’am. A rice ball would be fine, ma’am.”
I guess hamburg steaks were extra-special to Pochi.
“She can use Spellblade at her level…?”
“Promising.”
Yusek, a short spear–wielding spriggan, and Gurgapoya (Guya), a short-spoken elf who used a helix spear, were impressed with Liza’s moves.
We’d just met Mr. Yusek today, but he was as skilled with a spear as Guya and said to be the strongest of the spriggans living in the Bolenan Forest.
When he introduced himself, he even showed us his trick of making Spellblade fly off the tip of his short spear.
I asked him to show us again, but he simply told me to “steal it.”
Easy for him to say when he hasn’t done the trick again since.
It was pretty neat, so I’d definitely like to learn how eventually.
“Combine with magic.”
“You can’t stop a charging monster with a shield alone! You have to use your magic at the same time and not worry so much about preserving all of your magic power. Don’t be stingy with the Body Strengthening!”
“Advice accepted.”
The other short-spoken elf of the party, magic swordsman Gimasarua (or Gia), was teaching Nana, along with the shield-using dwarf Keriul. He was pretty strong at level 38.
As it turned out, Keriul was also the uncle of Zajuul, the lovestruck smith I’d met in the dwarves’ independent city of Bolehart.
There weren’t any elves who specialized in shields, so Hiya, who had a lot of connections, had brought the dwarf from the leprechaun village where he was studying.
“Miss Lulu, be careful not to bend your knees.”
“Y-yes, Miss Nea.”
“Nnngh, I can’t help it! They’re gonna breeeak!”
“Arisa, one must be flexible if one wishes to excel at martial arts. Try to be more bendable.”
Surprisingly, Nea the cook was the one training Lulu and Arisa.
Despite the elves’ magical excellence, there were very few who could use Space Magic, and all of them were away on business with the high elf Aialize, so none could train Arisa.
Miss Nea had offered to teach Arisa self-defense instead and ended up roping in Lulu as well.
Lulu’s Magic Gun and Arisa’s chant-less Space Magic weren’t well suited to close combat with humanoids, so this worked out perfectly.
Mia was away with her mother at the stone stage, where she was being initiated in the art of Spirit Magic.
Impressed by the convenience of Spirit Magic, Arisa briefly considered acquiring the skill but abandoned that idea as soon as she saw that it cost even more skill points than Space Magic.
“Now, Satou, shall we begin our training as well?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hishirotoya, the long-spoken elf, was my teacher.
“… ? Breeze Soyokaze.”
“… ? Breeze Soyokaze.”
“… ? Breeze Soyokaze.”
Yes, he was training me in using chants.
I’d been using scrolls as a loophole to increase the amount of spells I could use from my magic menu, but I still wanted to learn to use magic properly.
Scrolls could be made only for spells up to intermediate magic, not to mention that I had to personally request them from Viscount Siemmen’s scroll workshop.
I did use magic in front of Hishirotoya during the hunting trip the other day, but he assumed that was just a hero’s unique skill of some kind, so he didn’t comment on the fact that I couldn’t use chants.
“… ? Breeze Soyokaze!”
A gentle breeze brushed against my cheek, but it definitely wasn’t I who’d caused it.
“Easy.”
It was Goya, who’d officially developed a grudge against me when I beat him at buffalo hunting.
“Goya, if you’re going to get in the way, just go home.”
“Mrrr. Demonstrating.”
Hishirotoya frowned at Goya’s smug expression.
The scolding did nothing to lessen his smirk, though.
Clearly, he was pleased to have found something he could beat me at.
I was privately a little irritated, but I used my “Poker Face” skill to deflect his taunting with the attitude of a mature adult.
“Don’t let it get you down, Satou.”
“I’m not particularly upset.”
I brushed off the consolation of my teacher, Hishirotoya, as lightly as I could.
Training might make you think of working from dawn till dusk to master something, but the elves’ idea of it was a bit more relaxed, probably because they lived more than a hundred times longer than humans did. Our training lasted only a couple of hours each afternoon.
The elves’ training began with a lecture explaining the point of the exercises we were about to do, then it moved on to more hands-on training, concluding with a sort of review meeting summarizing the day.
Today, as it often did, the final meeting took place in the steamy tubs of the public bathhouse.
“Satou.”
With a little sploosh, Mia plopped down next to me, along with her mother, Lilinatoa. They’d just returned from Spirit Magic training.
Perhaps it was because she was an elf, but Lilinatoa definitely didn’t look like a woman who had ever given birth.
After I greeted the pair, I resumed my conversation with Hishirotoya.
“Why, it took Goya more than thirty years before he could chant properly.”
“Th-that’s quite a long time.”
I was surprised he’d been willing to keep at it for thirty years, honestly.
That knowledge would probably soften the blow next time he showed up grinning smugly at me.
“Phew, you finally smiled!”
Arisa looked up at me with a relieved expression.
“The bath is one of the only times our master ever lets his feelings show on his face, you see,” she added to Mia, speaking around me.
“Mm. Got it.”
Since we’d gotten into the habit of all bathing together after training, I explained things to the elves and got permission for everyone to use bathrobes.
None of the elves was wearing one, however.
Hishirotoya gave this explanation:
“We elves are like one big family, and we don’t lust after the opposite sex as intensely as most other races do.”
Most likely, this meant that elves had a low reproduction rate, as was often the case in stories.
If they bred like humans, the world would be full of elves by now.
“I’m amazed you have children at all, then!”
“Well, elves do fall in love. If those feelings remain for a hundred years or so, marriage is usually the next step.”
Hishirotoya’s answer seemed to miss the point of Arisa’s remark ever so slightly.
“Marriaaage?”
“We saw a wedding parade in the old capital, sir!”
Tama and Pochi, who were playing around with their towels in the water, perked up at the mention of a familiar word.
“What are elf weddings like?”
“Aaze.”
“Blessing.”
The two short-spoken elves answered Arisa’s question.
Of course, their meaning was unclear, so we asked the more verbose elves to explain.
“The couple takes an oath of marriage in the World Tree, and Lady Aaze confers a blessing upon them. Then the pair pours their magic into the Holytree Stone they receive and nurtures it along with their love.”
If I remembered correctly, the Holytree Stone was also known as a Philosopher’s Stone, the object that was the base of the powder Aialize had me use at the stone stage.
The stone must be used as a sort of wedding ring or registration.
“Once a couple has been married for between ten and fifty years, they will generally enter the mating season. It is easy to tell when a child has been conceived, as the bearer will experience a craving for the Holytree Stone. It’s believed that if the mother consumes water containing the powder of the Holytree Stone while pregnant, the child will be happy and healthy.”
A Holytree Stone was basically a magic-boosting item, so maybe the elves needed magic power to develop a fetus.
Come to think of it, the kobolds I’d met in the Muno Barony said that they needed jewels called blue crystals to have children, too.
Maybe it was for similar reasons.
“What are you all talking about? I think Mia may be a bit young for this sort of education.”
A beautiful platinum-blond woman emerged from the steam: the high elf Aialize.
It was hard not to get flustered upon seeing the naked body of someone who was just my type.
“Aaze.”
“It’s unusual to see you in the public bathhouse, Lady Aaze.”
The other elves’ words went in one ear and out the other.
Embarrassingly enough, I was so entranced by Aialize’s gold-standard body that it was like I’d rocketed back to puberty.
I couldn’t even tear my eyes away, let alone make some kind of clever greeting.
And Aialize, whose face turned red before my staring eyes, seemed to be in a similar state.
“Whatever is the matter, Lady Aaze?”
Lua the shrine maiden appeared behind Aialize, looking at her in confusion.
“Ah! Mia, quick!”
“Mm. Guilty.”
I had never felt so grateful for the iron-wall pair’s devotion and, at the same time, so bitter.
The girls hid Aialize from my view, during which time she quickly plunged her nude body into the bathwater.
“Thank you, Arisa.”
“Hmph! You never get like that when you see us naked.”
“Mm. Rude.”
I let the angry girls scold me without arguing back and then asked Lulu to bring a robe for Aialize.
Ideally, I would have just moved from the so-called men’s bath to the women’s bath, but a certain fellow standing at attention down below was making it impossible for me to leave at that moment.
Instead, I would just have to muddle through a safe conversation until my “situation” calmed down.
“I’m terribly sorry for staring so rudely, Lady Aialize.”
“U-uh-huh…”
Aialize simply gazed at me with her face half-underwater.
Was it just my imagination, or were her eyes wandering around my shoulders and collarbone?
“What has gotten into you, Lady Aaze? You’re behaving like a young maiden who…”
“…Lua?”
Lua trailed off mid-sentence, causing the short-spoken Miss Gia to look at her in concern.
“N-no, it’s nothing. It couldn’t be.”
“Mrrr.”
Lua’s face said that it was definitely something, but she dismissed the conversation anyway.
Gia still looked concerned, but she didn’t pry any further, since she was probably reluctant to bother Lua.
And so the awkwardness remained for the rest of our brief bath time.
“Ahhh! Coffee milk after a bath is the best thing ever!”
Arisa put a hand on her hip and chugged the bottled coffee milk ecstatically.
Fortunately, her cheerful voice banished any remaining awkwardness in the air. If people had type attributes, Arisa would definitely be Light.
At any rate, her excitement made all the work that went into that bottle worth it.
“Arisa, regular milk is superior, I report.”
“Mrrr. Fruit milk.”
Nana and Mia, who were clad only in towels wrapped around their bodies, chimed in with their own preferences.
My guess was that Nana just liked the cute cow mascot I put on the label of the regular milk bottles.
“Carbonation ruuules?”
“The popping is so exciting, sir.”
Tama and Pochi, who were wearing pajama pants with embroidered paw designs and short camisoles, slurped at their bottles to avoid spilling any of the bubbly carbonated water.
Lulu was wearing a T-shirt and shorts as she stretched in one corner of the room, so she must have been planning on hydrating later.
And Liza, always a bath fanatic, was still enjoying her time in the tub.
“Mm, delicious!”
Miss Aialize looked thrilled as she stood in front of the glass-doored refrigerator sipping fruit-flavored milk.
For some reason, her voice was always crystal clear even in the noisiest places.
It probably just seemed that way because it was so pleasing to my ears.
“This yellorange fruit drink is wonderful. One of your new creations, Nea?”
“No, Lady Aaze. All these drinks were made by Mr. Satou. He shared the recipes, too, so I can make it for you anytime.”
“Satou made this?”
Aialize’s surprised voice had a note of pure admiration.
For some reason, I felt very proud of that.
“Come to think of it, has the public bathhouse always had this magic cold-storage device?”
“Satou.”
“Satou made that for us as well.”
The other elves answered Lua’s question.
“You’re so talented, Satou!”
“Not at all. I just happened to get a hold of a very large ice stone in the old capital, so…”
Aialize’s earnest praise caught me so off guard that I barely registered the vague excuse I made in response.
Just like when we were in the bath, I felt strange somehow, as if I were experiencing puberty all over again…
But for whatever reason, part of me couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t a bad thing.
“This is an emergency.”
“Mm. Danger.”
Arisa and Mia furrowed their brows and leaned together conspiratorially, but I was in such an inexplicably good mood that it didn’t bother me one bit.
“Hambuuurg.”
“Hooray, sir! Professor Hamburg is as wonderful as ever today, sir!”
Tama and Pochi did a triumphant dance when they saw what was for dinner.
Everyone from the bathhouse was gathered around the table in the tree house, as well as Nea and the other cooking-obsessed elf girls.
I was teaching Mia’s mother and Nea the tofu hamburg steak recipe.
“I love hamburg steak.”
“All of Mr. Satou’s cooking is delicious, really.”
Aialize and Lua, who I’d invited along partly as an apology for the incident in the bathhouse, seemed to be impressed with the dish as well.
“If you’ve got this steak fried in soy sauce, why even bother with the vegetable salad?”
“Now, now. You’ve got to eat a balanced diet,” I scolded Arisa, shaking my head.
I’d been making a lot of protein-heavy dishes to go along with our training, but I wasn’t exactly looking to turn my party into a bunch of muscle-bound hulks, so I still included other things besides meat.
Today’s fried dish was made with whale meat, but there was also a rocket wolf steak. The buffalo meat was delicious, too, but we’d get tired of it if we ate the same kind of meat too many times in a row.
However, the elves had a few complaints about the monster meat dishes on the table.
“Monster meat.”
“Safe?”
Did elves have an aversion to eating monster meat?
“How unusual. But Lady Aaze is here, so we should be fine, no?”
“Mm. No miasma.”
Miasma was what demons collected to resurrect a demon lord, right?
“Does monster flesh contain miasma?”
“That’s right. But since miasma is weak to divinity and strong spirit light, it gets purified just by being near Lady Aaze, so there’s no harm done,” Hishirotoya responded.
So if Miss Aialize wasn’t around, it could cause harm?
But we ate it all the time, and so did a lot of people in the Muno Barony now…
“The meat of weak monsters isn’t a problem. Besides, your spirit light is even stronger than Lady Aaze’s, so if the meat was processed near you, the miasma would disperse to the point of harmlessness.”
Hishirotoya went on to clarify that if one used something like the chaos jar or malice urn that the demon lord–worshipping cult Wings of Freedom used to collect miasma, they could purge the meat of miasma even without me around.
Maybe the stat-raising effect from eating fried whale meat was even a result of residual miasma.
Not that I was planning on eating any miasma-filled monster meat to test that theory.
At any rate, with that problem solved, we started eating.
“Satou. Tastes weird.”
Mia, who was eating a tofu hamburg steak, frowned uncertainly.
“It’s tastyyy.”
“Don’t be rude to Professor Hamburg, sir!”
Tama and Pochi defended the hamburg. At least they licked the sauce off their forks before waving them around; that was probably Lulu’s or Liza’s teachings at work.
Today, I’d given Mia a normal tofu hamburg without any alterations. I was eating the same thing, but it tasted perfectly satisfactory to me.
“You don’t like it? Try the tofu hamburg steak on this plate, then.”
I pulled out a spare from the warming magic tool and placed it in front of Mia.
“Mm. Yum.”
Pleased with that bite, Mia started to munch away happily on that dish instead.
Tama and Pochi split the rest of the tofu she’d abandoned, although they shoved any non-potato vegetables onto Mia’s plate.
I guess I had better break the news.
“Mia, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Mm?”
I approached Mia calmly, but for some reason she closed her eyes and puckered her lips. Arisa was a bad influence on her.
“It’s about the hamburg steaks,” I continued pointedly.
At this, her expression immediately turned displeased.
“The one you just ate had meat in it.”
I’d been increasing the proportion of meat in her tofu hamburg steaks since we first started staying in the tree house. The one she’d just happily consumed was about 70 percent meat.
“…Guilty.”
Mia gave me a look of dramatic betrayal.
“I know. I’m sorry. But the first hamburg steak I gave you earlier had no meat in it. It was a regular tofu hamburg steak.”
“Mrrr.”
Mia seemed conflicted, so I gave her one final push. “Mia, which kind would you like more of?”
“Mrrr. This one.”
Mia pointed at the tofu hamburg steak with meat in it.
“Mm. Yum.”
Overcoming her distaste, Mia gave a satisfied smile as she ate the meat-and-tofu-combination steak.
She still didn’t seem to be able to eat a normal hamburg steak with only meat, but I’d like to think she’d overcome her dislike of meat at least a little.
“You can have a bite of this real hamburg steak, sir.”
“Mrrr. Uh-uh.”
Pochi offered her a forkful with plenty of gravy, but Mia shook her head rapidly and pushed it away.
You just couldn’t rush these things.
Once the meal was partway over, Nea updated me on the progress of our curry operation.
Miss Noa was the one who really wanted to reproduce the curry, but she was very shy, so Nea was running the operation for her.
“So the spriggans and leprechauns are willing to search for the spices for us?”
“Yes, they seemed quite excited. Said it was a race to see who could locate the legendary ingredients first.”
Spriggans had slightly gray-brown skin, while leprechauns had coppery skin. Both were short with slightly pointed ears, as was characteristic of all fairy races.
Unfortunately, classic races like half-elves and dark elves were sadly nonexistent.
To think that I would never get to meet a busty brown-skinned dark elf… This parallel world wasn’t nearly fantasy enough, if you asked me.
“By the way, the World Tree actually governs darkness, and all elves get dark skin if they’re in the sun long enough. Incidentally, it’s impossible for even fellow fairy races to interbreed. Aside from specific exceptions like humans and beastfolk, only certain similar species of beastfolk, like catfolk and tigerfolk or dogfolk and wolffolk, can reproduce with one another.”
Wow, so humans and beastfolk could interbreed?
I guess I had known that, since Tama and Pochi were born to humans with ancestral traits.
“Not even elves and high elves?”
“Of course not. Our roots are fundamentally different.”
Roots?
I supposed high elves did look more like humans than regular elves.
“High elves are demi-gods. They come from the divine realm, like the World Tree or the gods themselves.”
Lua the shrine maiden was the one who casually divulged this crucial information.
…So Aialize is a demi-goddess?
It was hard to think of her as divine when she was stuffing her cheeks with hamburg steak and chicken-stuffed omelet rice.
If anything, she was more like a hapless older sister.
…Not that there was anything wrong with a hapless older-sister figure.
“Is the divine realm where gods and goddesses like Lady Parion live?”
“No, it’s—”
“Lady Aaze, please don’t speak while you’re eating.”
“…Mph!”
“L-Lady Aaze?”
Aialize tried to swallow too quickly because of Lua’s scolding and ended up choking instead.
I hurried over to her side with “Warp,” offering her a glass from the table.
“Here, drink some water. Slowly, now.”
She seemed to be fairly used to being cared for.
“Th-thank you, Satou.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Once she drank the water and took a deep breath, Aialize thanked me with a faint smile.
I’d been in such a hurry before that I used “Warp,” but nobody seemed to have noticed.
“So what sort of place is the divine realm exactly?”
“It’s the world of the god of creation who made us high elves and the World Trees. But we were sent out along with the World Trees when we were young, so most of us have little to no memories of the place.”
I guess the myths I saw in those picture books a while back were true, then.
The eight deities, including Parion, came to the world aboard the eight World Trees.
This world itself existed independently of the god who created the World Trees, and the gods essentially came here to pioneer the place rather than being assigned here.
Other than dragons, the original inhabitants of this world, all living things here were born of seeds that were pooled in the World Trees. They weren’t created by the gods from the picture book like Parion was.
So were World Trees like the gods’ cross-dimensional seeding ships?
This sounded more like science fiction than fantasy to me.
“Satou.”
Clearly uninterested in Aialize’s and the others’ explanations of the mythology of this world, Mia plopped into my lap, bored.
“Mia, there’s food on your face.”
“Clean.”
I sighed and wiped Mia’s face with a handkerchief.
Something had caught my attention before, but I’d forgotten what it was while I was taking care of Mia.
Allowing my gaze to wander in the hope that it might come back to me, I noticed that Miss Aialize had some rice on her cheek.
“Pardon me, Lady Aialize.”
I reached out and plucked the grain of rice from her face, then popped it into my own mouth like I would while taking care of one of the younger kids.
“Aaah!”
Arisa and Mia cried out furiously. The word traitor was all but written across their faces.
For some reason, even Lulu exclaimed with them, looking at me with sad eyes.
“Lady Aaze?”
Nea’s voice drew my eyes back to Aialize, who’d turned bright red and looked ready to pass out.
It reminded me of Miss Karina, who was on her way to the royal capital.
Something was strange, though. Aialize didn’t seem to be afraid of men like Karina was, and she should be accustomed to people taking care of her.
For whatever reason, Arisa and Mia had clearly decided that Aialize was their enemy now.
“Me too, master!”
“Here.”
The two of them leaned close to me, having deliberately stuck chicken rice onto their faces.
“Don’t play with your food, girls.”
I didn’t want them to be a bad influence on Pochi and Tama, so I moved to clean their faces with a handkerchief, but their eyes were so desperate that I gave in and took the rice off by hand instead.
Just as I’d feared, Tama and Pochi started to copy them, but Liza told them off for me.
The meal seemed to have died down, so I decided to bring out dessert.
When I returned from the kitchen with pudding, Aialize and Lua were gone.
According to Arisa, they’d been called back to work on urgent business.
Their markers were moving high in the World Tree, so maybe something was happening in orbit or even in the void of space.
I’d have liked to help them, but I didn’t know whether it was appropriate for an outsider like me to stick my nose into their business. I was somehow very afraid of butting in and possibly getting turned away by Aialize.
So much for my usual nosiness.
“Huh! What a strange fiber. It’s not rubber, but it’s not synthetic, either.”
Arisa was very interested in the rare textiles arranged on a shelf in the sewing workshop.
Three days had passed since the incident in the bath. Today, my ever-popular master Hishirotoya had introduced Arisa and me to a sewing workshop owner.
I was told they had magic cloth, so I’d been looking forward to the trip.
The workshop was in a special domed area for such places, next to the secret underground city where everyone actually lived.
The other children were picking wild plants in the forest near the tree house under Mia’s guidance.
“It’s the shrinking cloth of an Arido Arachne—it shrinks if you put magic power into it. We have ordinary rubber, too, so if you need any, we can get some from the warehouse later.”
“You have rubber?!”
“Y-yes, it grows in the south of the forest. It smells unpleasant when it’s processed, though, so I would personally suggest the fiber of a bouncer fruit from the Mountain-Trees or Oil Spider thread, if you’re using it for cloth…”
The Elvish workshop owner seemed a little taken aback by Arisa’s enthusiasm.
She looked like an adorable little girl but spoke in the tone of an old townie grandmother, making for a pretty impressive contrast.
We already used bouncer fruit fiber for our socks and underwear.
The Oil Spider thread turned out to be what was used for the knee socks I saw in Mia’s little fashion show.
She also demonstrated fabric that was made from White Hornworm thread. Its feel and finish were exactly like synthetic fibers.
“There are quite a few fabrics that react to magic, aren’t there?”
“That’s right. Yuriha fiber, which was popularized by the gnomes long ago, is the most famous, but there are others, too. Kenea worm cloth reflects magic, for instance, while fiber made from the leaves of the World Tree amplifies magic power.”
Ohhh, nice. Those are some very fantasy-style fabrics.
Intrigued, I asked if she knew about any other rare cloth products.
“Others? Let me see… Well, legend has it that the Viroanan clan of high elves weave textiles from the silver hide of the giant monster fish, which can repel even advanced Light Magic and Holy Swords.”
That was an even cooler concept than I’d expected.
But the giant monster fish Tobkezerra—whales, basically—that I’d defeated in the old capital had black hides.
Maybe there was a rare spawn large monster fish subspecies with silver skin?
If I could get a hold of that material, I could really enhance the defensive power of our everyday clothes.
“So there are giant monster fish with silver skin as well? I thought for sure they were only black.”
“Oh? Have you seen a giant monster fish before, Mr. Satou?”
“Yes, just once.”
“Well, well. I’m surprised you got away safely.” The workshop owner looked impressed.
I guess not all of the elves knew that I was the hero who held my own in a fight against a black dragon.
“Right, the silver hide. That doesn’t refer to the epidermis, you see. As I recall…”
The workshop owner opened a thick book on a table and cast some sort of spell.
Small particles of light gathered around the book, and the pages began to flip on their own.
Then, the book stopped on an illustration of a familiar-looking whale. Automatic searching magic? That was pretty convenient.
“Here it is. Can you read Elvish?”
According to the ancient Elvish explanation the workshop owner pointed out, there was a layer of metallic-colored fat in between the skin and bones of the whale’s head that had strong impact-resistant properties. When hardened, it became the silver hide the workshop owner was referring to.
The methods for processing it continued for another twenty pages or so, but most of it was about how to cut the hide down to a reasonable size and how to break it down into fibers.
There were other sewing-related secrets recorded in this book, too.
If I could find out the raw materials and processing methods involved, I’d love to try making some things. With my map search, I could track down just about any material.
“Thank you for sharing this valuable knowledge with me. Once I manage to get some silver hide, I’ll be sure to bring it here.”
“If that ever happens, I’ll make you the best clothes you ever saw.”
I was planning on processing the hide and bringing it here within the next few days, but the shop owner seemed to think I was joking.
While I was at it, I also asked about good materials for sailcloth.
“Sailcloth? I’d recommend cloth made with ironshell fruit fibers with increased volatility. If you have enough wind stones, you can treat it to create wind, so you’d be able to sail even when the air is calm.”
I still had a lot of ironshell fruits from the giants’ village and a decent handful of wind stones from the Muno Barony. Maybe I could find out how to process them?
“Other than that… If Hiya’s place has monster materials in stock, a hydra wing or one from a big enough wyvern makes a great sail, too.”
While I was lost in thought, the workshop owner gave me more suggestions.
I had plenty of those, too, but the image of a hydra wing sail sounded like the makings of a demon lord’s ship to me, so I decided I’d rather stick with the ironshell fruit / wind stone combo.
“Dearie me—we got a bit off topic there. Now, I suppose I’ll teach you embroidery first.”
“Aw, what?! Um, embroidery is a bit—”
“Now, now, child. If you’re making clothes out of fabric, you simply must put love into them with needlework.”
Arisa, who didn’t like such fiddly work, started to protest, but the workshop owner seemed used to getting this attitude from young people and cheerfully steamrolled over her.
Thus, we started learning to embroider under her guidance.
“…Very nicely done, Satou.”
Looking at my finished work, the shop owner gave a small sigh of admiration.
Somewhere in the course of her teaching, she’d dropped the “Mr.” and started simply calling me “Satou.”
“It’s more fun than I expected it to be.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
She nodded triumphantly.
I wasn’t just being polite. I’d thought we would simply be making little patterns, but her “embroidery” turned out to use Rune Magic and magic circles to create magic tool–like functions.
Unlike the makeshift thing I made with light stones in the old capital, these were patterns that had been refined over hundreds or even thousands of years.
“Still, Satou, your skills may be on par with the oldest of elves, but your artistry could use work… You have to be willing to experiment a little more if you hope to become a first-class craftsman. You could learn a thing or two from Arisa on that front.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Though it wasn’t as bad as my lack of musical sense, I was never very good at artsy stuff. I just preferred to keep things simple.
Meanwhile, despite being praised for her artistry, Arisa was muttering to herself darkly as she worked.
“Aaargh, this suuucks!”
Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Arisa shrieked at the ceiling.
I guess what she needed to learn was patience.
“Heyo, is Kea here?”
While the workshop owner was reviewing Arisa’s and my collaborative work on a maid outfit, a new elf entered the room.
Her oil-smeared face, overalls, big boots, and gloves all screamed that she was a technician of some kind. She even had glasses on a cord around her neck.
But despite my assumptions, the AR display stated that she was a First-Class World Tree Gardener.
“Why, if it isn’t Jia. Rare to see you leaving the observatory.”
“How many void suits have you finished?”
“I’ve got two here now, but I just delivered five of them to you…”
“Well, there was a bit of an incident up there… Please just give me the two you’ve finished. And we kind of need seven more as soon as possible…”
“That’s not happening, and you know it.”
The workshop owner flatly shut down the proposed deadline and then left to get the finished products from the warehouse.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought…”
Miss Jia slumped into a chair, so I gave her a bubbly yellorange-flavored drink to help with her exhaustion.
“Thank you. We haven’t met, have we? I’m Jilsaria. Usually, my job is to maintain the emerald branches in the space observatory.”
Jia sounded world-weary as she introduced herself and sipped the beverage automatically.
Her expression reminded me so strongly of a programmer being forced to do the impossible during a death march that my heart went out to her immediately.
“But now I’ve got to deal with those annoying jellyfish, so I can’t do much proper maintenance… Ahhh, I hope Puya’s anti-sap-pollution project is going all right…”
Uh-oh. She was starting to mutter incomprehensibly to herself.
At times like this, a drink worked better than any kind words.
I knew just what an exhausted engineer needed.
“Miss Jia, please drink this, too.”
“Sure, thanks. I’d rather some liquor, to be honest, but that’d just knock me out…”
I handed Jia a nutritional supplement potion.
She drank it in between muttering, then suddenly hopped out of her chair, looking totally refreshed.
“What is this?! Some kind of miracle potion?! It’s amazing!”
I had several barrels’ worth of stock of the potion, so I would happily give some to her coworkers, too, if she liked it that much.
“Be careful not to stand up too fast, or you might get dizzy. If you like, you can take these to your fellow workers, too.”
“Man, that’d be fantastic. Normally we get by with the Forest Magic spell Stamina Charge, but I guess we’ve been using it too much, ’cause lately it’s not really cutting it.”
I took about thirty potions out of Storage by way of the Garage Bag, put them in a sack, and handed them to Miss Jia.
I just couldn’t turn a blind eye to the struggles of a fellow engineer, since it was like watching my past self.
…Oh wait, isn’t Jia technically a gardener?
“Thanks for waiting.”
Kea returned with the void suits floating on a Practical Magic Floating Board.
“S-space suits?!” Arisa exclaimed in surprise.
If anything, I thought they looked more like old-fashioned diving suits. All the rivets really gave them that retro feel.
“Thanks a ton, Kea.”
Looking relieved, Miss Jia accepted the void suits and put them away in a large Magic Bag.
“…Hmm? What happened, Jia? You look like a different person from before.”
“Yeah, the potion this human gave me sorted me out. Please deliver the last five as soon as you can, okay?”
With that, Jia waved and left the workshop.
“Easy for her to say… All my helpers who’re good enough to sew void suits are away helping Lady Aaze, and there’s no way I can finish all five on my own. I’d have to wake up our ancestors who are abed or something—”
The workshop owner abruptly covered her mouth with her hands, cutting off the stream of complaints after Jia was gone.
I was guessing these ancestors were the elves sleeping in the secret part of the World Tree. Abed was probably a code word for the sleep tanks.
Waking the elves from their sleep tanks was probably a huge taboo in their culture.
“…I’m terribly sorry. There’s no point complaining to you about it.”
The workshop owner smiled sheepishly, and Arisa suddenly jumped to her feet.
“But there is! You’ve got one skilled helper right here!”
Arisa pointed straight at me.
The workshop owner clapped her hands together in hopeful realization, so I agreed to her request to help make the void suits.
If it would help the busy Miss Aialize even a little, I didn’t mind a bit of hard work.
And so the workshop owner and I got to work…
“I underestimated elves’ sense of the passage of time.”
“Incredible. We’ve finished it before dinnertime.”
In the course of about half a day, the workshop owner and I managed to complete one void suit.
If we worked hard through the night, we could probably finish all five in less than two days, but after we completed the first one, she declared it was time to stop.
Part of the reason might have been that she had only two suits’ worth of the necessary magic tools, like air purification and heat control, so there was no sense in rushing.
I knew this, but the programmer in me who prioritized deadlines above all else couldn’t help feeling frustrated.
If I didn’t hold back at all, I could use 120 Magic Hands to simultaneously produce them through the night and have thirty suits by morning.
Like that time I mass-produced the silver chains in the old capital…
“Master? Your face is getting a bit scary.”
Arisa prodded my cheeks, bringing me back to my senses.
I must have gotten a little carried away with my desire to show off to Miss Aialize. Sure, this was a chance to score some points with a girl who was totally my type, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of making my wards worry.
“I was just remembering when I used to do death marches every day,” I explained, using my “Fabrication” skill to come up with a good excuse. Then I took a deep breath to cool my heated face.
“Thank you, Arisa.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.”
Arisa jokingly struck a little pose of triumph over calming me down.
I patted her head and then started making the remaining four suits with the materials I’d gotten from the workshop owner.
The work progressed smoothly, and aside from the final magic tools that still needed to be added, the suits were finished within about two hours.
I was still holding back pretty significantly, but when I finished the work and looked up, Arisa was gaping at me with wide eyes.
Oh well.
“So you’re the Satou fellow Hiya mentioned? Sure, you can check things out.”
The next morning, after I’d finished two more void suits in the sewing workshop, I came to a magic-tool studio that Hishirotoya had introduced me to.
Of course, my goal was to help make the controller devices for the suits.
Once the studio owner, Mr. Kiya, agreed to have me, Hishirotoya left with a smile.
I’d already explained the circumstances and gotten permission to take the day off from training.
If only my manager at my old job had agreed to give paid time off so easily…
I shook off that desolate thought and focused on observing as Kiya and his apprentices made magic tools.
Unlike when humans made magic tools, most of the elves seemed to use alchemy and magic at the same time.
“You fool! How many times have I told you to mind the temperature when handling breathgrass?!”
“I’m sorry.”
“This endothermic liquid is terrible quality! Make it again! We can’t afford much more of this.”
“Yes, sir.”
I heard quite a few of these exchanges.
I could do this so much better…, I thought, like a classic anime protagonist.
Maybe I was just frustrated because the work here was getting bottlenecked so easily.
Kiya and his apprentices had just finished the first magic circuit, the core of the magic tool.
“Mr. Kiya, would it be all right if I help out, too?”
“Huh? It’s not as easy as it looks, you know.”
“Yes, I am well aware.”
In fact, Kiya’s demands of his apprentices were so intense, they would probably fail if their “Transmutation” skill wasn’t at least level 7.
“Fine, then. Just don’t get in the way.”
With his permission, I began to help.
“Satou! Contest!”
Mia’s childhood friend Goya appeared at the door, but…
“You moron! Making magic tools isn’t a game! Come back when you can make a basic magic circuit!”
…Kiya sent him running home with tears in his eyes. I felt a little bad.
For now, though, it was time to help out.
Any time one of the apprentices looked about to fail, I sneakily helped fine-tune the large transmutation equipment, used the Air Control spell to manipulate the temperature, and so on.
“Hmm. This just barely gets passing marks.”
Once we’d finished making components that met Kiya’s high standards, we started putting it all together.
The rest of the process was all in the hands of Kiya and his highest-level apprentices, all of whom had a “Transmutation” skill level of 9 or above, so my help wasn’t needed.
Relieved, I set about stealing their techniques instead.
I was able to figure out the process from the raw materials to the completed product, so all I needed now was the equipment and I’d be able to mass-produce void suits all on my own.
However, the team was able to finish the required amount of magic equipment for the void suits with about three hours left before sunset, so I didn’t end up needing to butt in.
Miss Doa, one of the main staff of the studio, brought the completed void suit magic tools to the sewing workshop along with two of the apprentices.
Taking advantage of the relaxed atmosphere now that the quota had been met, I asked what they normally made in the studio.
“Master Kiya and Master Doa usually make manned golems for use in space. I specialize in magic wands and staves. My research revolves around improving magic-power amplification and reducing consumption.”
“Living dolls.”
“I mainly develop single-seat magic aircrafts.”
“Magic storage devices.”
Ohhh, all their research sounded fascinating.
“What is it? You interested in golems?”
Kiya, who’d been listening to the conversation, looked eager as he dragged me to a garage in the back of the studio.
We hadn’t really been talking about golems, but I certainly was interested, so I followed him without protest.
The one there was an eight-legged spider-type golem. Its head appeared to be the cockpit.
It reminded me of collaborating with the mechanical engineering students to make a multi-legged Mars exploration robot back in college.
I had been in charge of programming, but since I made the driver software with the assembler, I had a decent amount of knowledge about the hardware, too.
“A golem with a pilot is pretty unique, right? Not only can it crawl all over the World Tree with its eight legs, it can even produce fire from this hole and propel itself through the void.”
I was a little confused by Kiya’s proud statement.
“Fire? Not compressed air?”
“Explosions are a more efficient use of magic.”
Huh. So flying with magic like that must have cost less than a propellant or compressed air.
I guess relying too much on my scientific knowledge could lead to strange pitfalls in this world.
“What about an aerodynamic engine? Does that have to do with efficiency, too?”
“You mean skypower? There’s no air in the void, so it wouldn’t work.”
So the void was definitely similar to outer space, then.
“How does this valve here operate?”
“There’s a winding mechanism at the end of this metal cord. An ultrasmall living doll inside the golem cranks it.”
What a strange structure—I wasn’t sure whether it was low-tech or high-tech. Couldn’t it just be set up to rotate when magic turned the device on?
I proposed a simpler mechanism to Mr. Kiya.
It could probably be used for controlling the sails on a boat and such, too.
While I was talking to Kiya about the mechanics of the golem, Doa came into the room. She was about as high-ranked in the studio as Kiya; they seemed to be husband and wife.
“Just looking at it from the outside won’t convey how much the golem is really worth. It’s got an intelligence circuit using Holytree Stone on the inside. Look, Satou. This is basically the golem’s brain.”
Doa led me into the cockpit, opened a wooden case, and showed me a remarkable magic circuit with a glowing blue stone set in the center.
I didn’t know how they did it, but there was a complicated magic circuit carved inside the transparent blue stone, too.
“The intelligence circuit receives orders from the cockpit and uses its own judgment to manipulate the eight legs. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
I’m a programmer, after all.
I’d studied control of multi-legged robots to the point where I’d even read foreign papers on the subject.
Intrigued, I went out on a limb and asked Miss Doa to show me the circuit diagram.
“If you think you can read it, go right ahead,” she answered simply and offered me a sheaf of papers.
They were a little complicated, but thanks to my maxed-out INT stat, I was able to figure them out in a reasonably short time.
Even in a parallel world, the process of trial and error was essentially the same.
It had the same problems, too: The algorithm had been expanded until it had a lot of bugs, which were then patched in a way that only caused further complications.
So I decided to share just a little bit of knowledge from my student days on the parts that seemed to be causing them the most trouble.
“Miss Doa, about this line…”
I was sure it was all right if I meddled just a tiny bit.
Thus, I spent a few enjoyable hours until the sun went down and then stopped by the sewing workshop on the way home to help finish the last of the void suits.
The owner complained about the overtime, but I managed to get her through it with the help of some dragonspring liquor.
She contacted Jia about the order using a small bird-type pseudo-spirit made with Spirit Magic, so I left the rest in their hands and headed back to the tree house.
Sunbeams streamed in through the tree house window, inviting me to awaken.
I was still half-asleep when the gentle scent of miso soup reached my nose. My “Keen Hearing” skill let me know that Lulu and Liza were working and chatting downstairs.
“…Morning already?”
I’d slept a lot deeper than I’d expected, perhaps because I’d managed to take care of the pending problem of making the void suits.
Letting my eyes wander, I saw Tama, sleeping curled up in a ball on my stomach, and Pochi, who was asleep holding hands with Mia. The pleasant sensation on the left side of my body was probably Nana.
Mia had been staying at her parents’ home for the past few days, but she must have crashed here last night.
The four of them were wearing a new creation of mine: kigurumi pajamas.
I’d made each of them in accordance with their personalities and tastes: a cat, a dog, a rabbit, and a chick.
“Good morniiing, all and one!”
Arisa flew into the bedroom in exceptionally high spirits.
Ever since we’d arrived in the Bolenan Forest, she’d been waking up early like a kid on vacation.
And since she was eating well and playing around all day, every day, a slight plumpness had returned to her cheeks and stomach.
I considered having her go on a diet, but her health seemed just fine for her age, so there was probably no need for that.
“Good morning, Arisa. Shouldn’t that be ‘one and all’?”
“I’ve heard it both ways. Anyway, we have the morning off today, right? Let’s go see the trampoline mushrooms or hunt for cured ham!”
Arisa threw the window blinds open gleefully.
I could more or less picture the former, but I wasn’t sure how one would “hunt for cured ham.”
Was there a cured ham tree in the Bolenan Forest or something?
…The scary part was that it wouldn’t be that surprising.
I checked the schedule tab in my menu.
“Today’s no good. We told the elf teachers we’d go mountain-stream fishing with them.”
“Ohhh, right. Guess the ham hunt will have to wait till next time, then.”
Arisa looked disappointed.
She seemed really intent on this cured-ham-hunt thing, so I made a note of it at the top of my list of activities.
“Good morniiing?”
“Yaaawn, sir.”
Tama stretched out in her cat pajamas, and Pochi rubbed her eyes and yawned widely in her dog pajamas.
Mia and Nana were awake, too.
“Satou.” Mia smiled sleepily. Despite her rabbit pajamas, she was purring and rubbing her face against me like a cat.
“Master.” Apparently envious of Mia’s gesture, Nana started imitating her.
“Me toooo?”
“Pochi wants to cuddle, too, sir.”
“M-me too, then!”
In the end, all of them dove on top of me, and we ended up tumbling back into bed.
I guess peaceful mornings like this weren’t so bad.
After a light breakfast, we went to the mountain stream in the Bolenan Forest with our elven teachers. Today, we weren’t training until the afternoon.
“Big caaatch?”
“Tama’s amazing, sir! I won’t lose, either, sir!”
Tama’s and Pochi’s cheerful voices rose over the soft burbling of the stream.
Arisa was wearing a large straw hat, a red long-sleeve shirt under a white T-shirt, and jeans-style pants.
It was probably some kind of cosplay, but I didn’t know who she was supposed to be.
“Mm. Big one.”
Mia reeled in a large rainbow trout–like fish called a Bolenan Large Trout.
Seeing that, Arisa turned a little frantic.
“Oh dear, even Mia’s gone and gotten ahead of little old me!”
Her strange phrasing probably had something to do with her cosplay.
She soon got bored of it, though, and went back to her regular manner of speaking.
“Maaan, now master and I are the only losers left!”
Excuse you.
If I could just catch a single fish, I could get the “Fishing” skill, and… No, I guess that wouldn’t be fair.
I quickly put aside such wicked schemes and simply devoted my heart to the melody of the stream and the quiet forest.
“A bite!”
Arisa’s shriek brought me back to reality just as I was about to become one with nature.
There wasn’t anything pulling on my fishing rod.
Arisa must have caught something.
“Whoo-hoooo!” She seemed even more excitable than usual.
The fish looked like a red haddock of some kind and was called a Leprechaun River Cod.
It was nearly a foot long. According to the elves, it was omnivorous and thus not well suited to being eaten raw, but it was delicious if pickled or dried. I bet it would taste great with sake.
Then, at long last, I finally got a bite as well.
I pulled the rod up with a light snap and landed a tiny, tiny loach.
> Skill Acquired: “Fishing”
“Won’t lose next time!”
The rest of the group praised me, but Goya snarled unhappily and ran away.
I hadn’t even known he was there or that we were competing again… Too bad. He could’ve joined us for lunch.
Upstream, where Goya had run off to, the samurai elf seemed to be up to something new.
“Prettyyy?”
“It’s a bug made of feathers and string, sir.”
“Watch and learn, you lot.”
The elves had crafted bait and were skillfully manipulating their rods to attract the fish.
“Looks reeeal?”
“The fish fell for it, sir!”
Tama and Pochi were so impressed that they did a little dance.
“…Fake bait? How very wicked.”
Miss Poa looked vexed.
Maybe she didn’t like that her student Pochi was more interested in the samurai elf’s technique than in her own.
“I believe using a lance is still faster than fishing.”
With that, Liza handed a significant bundle of river fish to Lulu.
She had been downriver with her teacher, the spear master Mr. Gurgapoya.
If we really wanted to be efficient, it’d be faster to just catch the fish with Magic Hand, but that would take the fun out of it.
We’d reeled in a decent amount, so I salted a fish for each person and roasted them over a fire on skewers.
This was an important part of river fishing, really.
For the main course, I made hot pot with miso, fish balls, and fresh wild vegetables. The younger kids had caught some river crabs, so I cut them in half and added them to the pot.
It wound up being a nice, rustic meal, taking me back to the survival camp I did as a kid during summer vacation.
“Mm! It’s a little salty, but that’s exactly how grilled fish skewers ought to be!”
Arisa chomped on her skewer happily.
“Arisa, you’ve left the head and the guts. They’re perfectly tasty. If you leave them, a waste ghost will come and haunt you,” Liza scolded.
“Awww, what? But the worms we used for bait are in there…”
“What about it?”
Liza clearly didn’t understand Arisa’s modern-girl sensibilities.
Luckily, Nana and Tama rescued her from her plight.
“Master, the watermelon has reached the perfect temperature for eating, I report.”
Nana was carrying two watermelons that had been chilling in the river.
Then, while Liza was distracted, Tama ate the remains of Arisa’s fish in two quick bites. “Thanks,” Arisa whispered.
“Don’t worry, be happyyy?” Tama responded cheerfully and dashed off to get some watermelon.
Judging by her tail, which was sticking straight up, she seemed to be proud of herself.
“Master, the watermelon is delicious, I confirm.”
“Thank you, Nana.”
Nana’s face was covered in juice from the watermelon, so I wiped it with a handkerchief before biting into the slice she brought me.
Then, as I reached up to remove the seeds from my mouth…
Ichirou! You must not eat like such a lady!
A memory flashed unexpectedly through my mind.
When did that happen?
On the balcony at the shrine next to my childhood friend’s house, a little girl with green hair smiled at me.
Her face was shadowed, so I couldn’t see her very well.
One must spit the seeds out like so if he wishes to properly enjoy the summer of his youth!
The summer breeze gently shifted her silver hair.
It must have been a memory of a summer vacation from my childhood, then… Or was it?
My childhood friend had black hair.
Then whose memory was this…?
“Master?”
A willowy hand tugged me back to reality.
“Sorry, Nana. I think I was daydreaming a little.”
I stood up and stretched to shake off the strange sense of déjà vu. Maybe I was just exhausted.
Since this was basically an adult summer vacation, I should really try to relax and enjoy it more.
“Ahhh, there they are!”
A voice like a spring breeze caressed my ears.
Turning around, I saw Aialize and Lua stepping out of a fairy ring.
They’d been so busy recently that it had been five days since I’d last seen them.
“Thank you, Satou!”
Aialize rushed up to me and grabbed my hands in both of hers, shaking them up and down.
“Kea and Kiya told me everything! They said it was all thanks to you that the void suits were ready earlier than expected!”
“Oh, don’t mention it.”
Just seeing Aialize’s smile was thanks enough for me.
“Mr. Satou, about the potions you gave Jia…”
Lua explained that the energy drink–style nutritional supplement potions turned out to be very popular.
“…If possible, we would love it if you could mass-produce them at our alchemy workshop…”
Darn. This was poorly timed, considering I’d just resolved to enjoy my vacation more.
Maybe I could just give the recipe to the elf alchemists and let them handle the rest…?
“Please, Satou?”
“Of course. It would be my pleasure.”
I tossed my reservations out the window and took Aialize’s hand instead.
“Guilty.”
“Why, you! Take this—Sunshine of Juuudgment!”
Urk, that’s bright.
The girls had redirected some sunlight right into my eyes with a reflector. I had the “Light Intensity Adjustment” and “Self-Healing” skills, so all it did was blind me a little, but that could’ve damaged the eyesight of an ordinary person; I’d have to scold them later.
Mia and Arisa were using the magic-reflecting prototypes I’d made with Kenea worm thread and the silver hide of the whales. If all they were going to do was reflect light with them, they should’ve just used a hand mirror.
I moved into the shade, where their reflected-light attack couldn’t reach me.
“Are you all right, Satou?”
“Yes, of course.”
I smiled at Aialize, who was kind enough to worry about me, then made arrangements with Lua for the potion producing.
“It’s no use hiding in the shade! Light can reach even the dark side of the moon!”
“Mm. Satellite.”
The two of them worked together to bounce the light into the shadows.
It reminded me of an old sci-fi anime where they reflected a giant laser attack, so I took a reflective sheet out of my pocket and bounced the light back at them for just a moment.
“My eyes! My eyyyyyes!”
Ignoring Arisa’s dramatic reaction, I watched Aialize and Lua leave, their business here finished.
Due to circumstances at the transmutation workshop, my little apprenticeship would be taking place the next day.
That left all of today to enjoy myself to the fullest and spend some quality family time together!
…Oh, but first I had better scold those two for their little light-reflecting prank.
“Is this the nutritional supplement potion I’ve heard so much about?”
“It’s sweet. You didn’t just add sugar to a recovery potion, did you?”
When I arrived at the transmutation workshop per Miss Aialize’s request, I was met with two familiar elves.
One was Tuya, the alchemist who’d given away all that information when I first went to the underground city with Mia; the other was his master, one of the Four Shogi Kings of Whatever, Miss Aea.
“No, there’s no sugar in it, I’m sorry to say. The main ingredients are yellorange fruit from the Mountain-Trees and gabo fruit.”
I handed the pair a recipe booklet, which I’d put together in Elvish.
It had simple illustrations along with step-by-step instructions, so I shouldn’t need to explain too much.
“Tuya, go get the materials from the workshop.”
“We don’t have any gabo fruit.”
“Satou, do you have any you can spare? If it’s payment you want, help yourself to any materials from the warehouse.”
“There’s no need for that. I have plenty of gabo fruits to go around.”
I had already transferred some gabo fruits to the Garage Bag in advance, so I brought them out.
Tuya returned with the yellorange fruits floating behind him thanks to Practical Magic, and together we got to work.
We used a magic tool of my own devising to grate the fruits.
“Hmm. So the top of the grater is fixed to this pedestal, then the gabo fruit is attached to this part that moves it back and forth across the grater… Quite ingenious.”
Ignoring his master, Aea, who was obsessing over the magic tool, Tuya set about grating the fruits with an ordinary formulation tool.
“Satou, contest!”
“Perfect timing, Goya. Help us grate these gabo fruits, please. Whoever grates them the finest wins.”
“Mm. Got it.”
Tuya seemed to know how to manage Goya pretty well and smoothly redirected him into helping out with the labor.
He didn’t seem to realize he’d been tricked, and I certainly didn’t mind the extra hands.
“When we’re done, we mix it into the boiled yellorange fruit juice, correct?”
“Yes, just add it a little at a time until it’s nice and thick.”
I watched Tuya work diligently.
When the elves’ Transmutation Tablet was activated, it formed a transparent magic frame, and the ingredients within floated in midair. The whole thing was surrounded by a mysterious sparkle throughout the process.
It was beautiful—and much more precise than human alchemy tools.
My recipe was meant for a human Transmutation Tablet, but it turned out that these techniques had generally been adapted from the elves, so their tablets were a much more efficient version.
“Does this look right for the settings?”
“Yes, I think that should work splendidly.”
From here on, the process was similar to making any ordinary magic potion, just with slightly different settings.
The two of them were well versed in alchemy, so they had no problem figuring it out.
In the back of the workshop was the same extra-large Transmutation Tablet setup I’d seen in the magic-tool workshop, but they explained that they would be using the smaller kind until they got a feel for the recipe.
Worn out from all the gabo-fruit grating, Goya was stretched out unmoving on the couch. Perhaps we could give him one of the recovery potions later.
“This is easier than I expected.”
“Fool!”
Tuya looked a little let down until his master bonked him on the head with a staff.
“That’s because Satou made the recipe so easy to understand. Besides, only a human could have come up with this potion!”
I was a little confused.
Why was it “only a human” and not “only Satou” specifically?
“What do you mean, boss?” Tuya asked, evidently as confused as I was.
“When we elves get tired, we simply rest until we’ve recovered. But humans have shorter life spans, so sometimes they need to keep working even if it requires the help of a potion like this.”
That made sense. If I were going to live for hundreds of years, I guess I wouldn’t be in a rush most of the time, either.
…Huh? Then why were Miss Jia and the others using potions to overwork themselves, and why did they need those void suits in such a hurry?
“This is remarkable.”
“Quite a collection, isn’t it?”
Leaving the rest of the potion production to Tuya, the master of the workshop was now showing me around their archives, which boasted many of the elves’ potion recipes and advanced research notes.
The shelves were stacked all the way up to the ceiling, some fifteen feet off the floor.
“It’s not a library, so you can’t take anything with you, but you’re welcome to read whatever you like. The banned books have been moved elsewhere, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just don’t teach these recipes to other humans, please.”
When I asked why, she explained that it would threaten the “diversity of recipes.”
But if I developed new recipes that utilized the knowledge or ideas I found here, I was welcome to spread them as much as I liked.
The master gave me a passkey to the archive, which was designed to look like a dancing frog, so I could easily come here and read while the others were sleeping.
“What sort of things are in the banned section, if I may ask?”
“Special recipes like elixirs, youth potions, cure-alls, and so on. They all require nigh-unobtainable ingredients like blood gems, giant monster fish liver, the scales of grown dragons, and so on. Or otherwise rare materials like Holytree Stone. There are other forbidden potions, too, like demonic potions and necromancy elixirs and such, so you mustn’t make those.”
The rare ones sounded rather intriguing. Even without the instructions, I’d love to find out what kind of potions there were and what ingredients they required.
That way, I could gather the ingredients and bring them here to get them made if I really needed them.
Youth potions, in particular, sounded like something I’d like to stock up on as soon as possible.
I knew it sounded selfish, but I wanted the head priestess of Tenion Temple to live as long as possible, and not just because she could revive my comrades if necessary.
At any rate, the ordinary archives contained potions like aphrodisiacs, stimulants, and other such things.
Finding this unusual, I asked Master Aea about it, and she said they were intended for married couples who were struggling to have children.
Normally, most couples conceived within the first hundred years or so, so these potions were rarely necessary, the master noted cheerfully.
As usual, I couldn’t quite keep up with the elves’ strange sense of time.
There were a lot of potions I couldn’t make with my Transmutation Tablet; when I worried about this aloud, they gave me an old one that no one was using. Elves were quite generous.
The actual library was in the lower part of the World Tree, comprised mostly of books from elves who were sleeping in the mystery area and those who had simply run out of space at home.
I’d have to get permission from Aialize or the elders to go there. Then I could bring Arisa and the others to browse around.
“Space is much freer than you youngsters think.”
About half a month had passed since we started living in the tree house when we got the chance to hear an elder elf give a lecture on Space Magic.
It was strange to hear such elderly-sounding words coming from the mouth of someone who looked like a young boy.
His white-robed elf assistants and apprentices stood behind him as silently as statues, giving off a rather intimidating air.
As usual, Goya had shown up, too, but quickly fled when he saw the elder and his entourage.
“Y’see the holes in that there box? Put your face close and have a peek inside.”
We took turns looking through the large holes in the box.
The box on the outside was a cube about three feet around, yet inside it was easily a hundred square feet of space.
“Ah! Master’s face is so far away!”
Pochi, who was looking through the hole on the other side of the box, waved to me excitedly. For some reason, it sounded like her voice overlapped on itself, though that might have just been my imagination.
Maybe it was because the distances between us inside and outside the box were so different.
I waved back at her, pulled away from the hole, and then looked at Pochi.
Her tail was wagging away as Liza held her up.
“Is this Space Expansion?”
“That’s right, lad.” The elder elf nodded. “Magic Bags and the like are made with a subversion of the Space Expansion spell called Garage.”
Space Expansion constantly used magic power, so it wasn’t well suited to being sustained for long periods of time.
The Garage spell created a subspace proportionate in size to the amount of magic initially used to invoke it; this magic then circulated internally through the subspace it created, meaning that it required only a minimal amount of magic to maintain.
Opening and shutting the gate required magic, which was used to restore any magic that had been consumed in the subspace.
The “Item Box” skill had a similar effect as Garage, with the additional feature of an inventory list that the skill user could view at any time.
The “Inventory” skill that heroes used worked in basically the same way as well, but since the subspace itself was created by the goddess Parion, it could store a virtually infinite amount of items.
…But my “Storage” skill didn’t use magic power at all, so how did that work?
Maybe it just happened to have similar functions but actually worked in a totally different way.
“Now we will use a Holytree Stone to fix the Garage spell to a bag.”
The elder elf reached into the pouch around his waist and pulled out a sapphire-like gem.
“Prettyyy?”
“So sparkly, sir.”
Tama and Pochi gaped.
“Lady Aaze has given me permission to use a Holytree Stone for thee, Satou, but as they are quite valuable, we shall only use one.”
Hmm. Considering how important they are, maybe we shouldn’t use one at all?
From what I’d gathered during our stay in the elf village so far, Holytree Stones had a lot of awfully important uses.
So I suggested using a core to make a Magic Bag instead.
“I have heard tell that humans use high-grade monster cores as a substitute for Holytree Stone, but not only will this reduce the amount of space it creates, the tool can break in less than a thousand years if left unmaintained. Thus, I cannot recommend such an inferior product.”
The elder elf shook his head, but a thousand years of effectiveness seemed fine to me.
It might have seemed inadequate to the elves, but with a human’s life span, I’d say even fifty years was plenty long enough.
“…Well, if you insist, I shall not argue, lad. We shall have Hiya prepare the necessary cores.”
“What grade of cores might be required? We’ve gathered plenty on our travels, so I’d be happy to provide them if they’re usable.”
I had a good store of monster cores, so there was no need to trouble my chant teacher, Hishirotoya, about it.
I showed the elder elf the grading scale that human alchemists used for cores and asked him what kind would work.
The ones I had on hand from level-30-and-up hydras, wyverns, and so on turned out to be a perfect fit.
In our travels through the Muno Barony and from the old capital through the Black Dragon Mountains, I’d gathered a pretty good amount. There were more than enough for each of my group members.
This way, we could also make a large bag to carry Nana’s giant shield and a backpack for transporting game that we wouldn’t have to worry about dirtying with blood.
“Now, then… Aside from the parts that require Space Magic, my apprentices can take care of the rest of the work. I must go and help Lady Aaze, so once I have explained a certain amount of the procedure, I should like to leave it to my helpers and come back only for the finishing touches. Is that all right?”
The elder looked apologetic, but I was the one putting him out during this busy time, so I wound up feeling guilty.
“That’s more than enough—thank you. Is it all right if I watch your apprentices work so that I can learn?”
“Indeed, that was my intent from the start. Please feel free.”
The elder nodded generously, but I saw the elves behind him frowning a little, so I decided I would go alone to watch the work.
That was five days ago.
I took time off from training to go to the workshop where the Magic Bags were being made, and I helped out the apprentices while I learned their techniques.
At first, the apprentice elves were distant with me, but when I readjusted their magic tools to function more efficiently, they opened up a little.
By this point, they had accepted me enough that they invited me along on their tea breaks.
Incidentally, Goya had stopped showing up after the first day. According to Arisa and the others, he was instead going to the training grounds whenever Mia was there.
“Satou, would you mind fine-tuning the Transmutation Tablet?”
“Wait. Me first.”
“Not so fast! I need Satou to help process the monster stomachs we’re using for the inner walls of these bags!”
I helped the elves with each of their requests in turn, feeling a bit like the office gofer.
“You’re pretty popular, Satou.” Hishirotoya teased me when he came to see how I was doing, but I couldn’t say I was looking to be popular with guys, pretty as these ones might be.
The “inner walls” the last elf mentioned were what we used to form the interior of the Space Magic subspace.
A subspace tended to have small gaps and such, so having a physical wall helped keep it together and protected the objects stored inside from any negative effects of being stored within an unstable subspace.
Monster stomachs were the best material for this inner wall, so I provided the necessary amount of hydra and wyvern stomachs from my Storage.
Like the “Item Box” skill, Magic Bags couldn’t hold living creatures. Unlike the former, however, it turned out that this was a deliberate prohibition put on Magic Bags during the creation process.
In the past, living things placed inside Magic Bags sometimes died of lack of oxygen or tore through the inner wall and escaped into subspace.
So setting up Magic Bags so they couldn’t hold living beings was a method of avoiding such accidents.
That being said, the Magic Bags we were making this time included permission to contain magic-made creatures, like golems.
Golems didn’t need oxygen and wouldn’t rampage inside the bag without orders.
“You’re amazing, Satou. On your first day, just seeing the beginnings of the control device surprised you, but now you’re using projection and sealing devices and even transcribing magic circuits without a problem.”
“That’s only because you’ve all guided me so well,” I responded as the elves admired my work.
I was being a little modest, but it was true: The elves here seemed to like teaching people, and they’d helped me learn a lot.
The devices in question were used to incorporate control circuits into the cores.
I was indeed surprised the first time I saw the magic circuits carved directly into cores that had been “formatted” using a special device. That must be how the tiny detailed magic circuits I saw in the multi-legged golem before were made, too.
As I was reflecting on all this, the elder elf came into the workshop. He was here to do the finishing touches today.
“Hmm. These are better made than usual.”
The elder elf inspected the prepared materials and nodded, looking satisfied. “Your skills have improved, you lot.”
“That’s all thanks to Satou.”
“Mm. Talented.”
“He helps us out with even the most tiring work, and his ‘Magic Manipulation’ is nearly as good as yours, master.”
For some reason, the apprentices all hurried to shift the praise over to me. I was quick to say “Oh, that’s not true” like a proper Japanese person, but the elves scolded me that this was “unnecessary.” I was glad that my help had been useful, but they didn’t need to flatter me that much.
Once this little scene was over, I watched the elder elf and his aides finish the process.
“… ? Garage Kakunouko.”
“… ? Set Rune Conferment Jutsu Shiki Kotei Fuyo.”
“… ? Preserve Rune Conferment Jutsu Shiki Hoji Fuyo.”
“… ? Cyclify Magic Maryoku Junkanka.”
Once the elder had invoked his spell, the apprentices activated shorter spells one by one.
I made a mental copy of the four spells with “Parallel Thoughts,” then noted them all in the memo tab of my menu while I watched the elder elf work.
“Now we must set this in place while the magic is stable.”
The apprentices’ spells were just stopgap measures until the magic device could be activated.
One of the assistant elves used Magic Hand to put the device inside the Garage.
“Activate.”
Once this was finished, the elder elf said a key word in Elvish, and the magic device activated and fused with the walls of the Garage. With this, the Magic Bag was complete.
Great. I managed to memorize the steps and the chants.
Once I learned how to chant properly, I should be able to reproduce the whole process.
Just imagining a Magic Bag made with the enormous stomach of a whale was a thrilling prospect.
As I was contemplating this, the elves moved on to the next bag.
Since I still couldn’t chant, it was frustrating not to be able to help.
“Is this the last one?”
“Affirmative.”
The elder elf’s voice sounded tired.
Even if he was just doing the finishing touches, making ten Magic Bags in one day must have been pretty exhausting.
All I could do was offer intermediate magic recovery potions and nutritional supplement potions to help him get through it.
…Were my potions the reason he couldn’t stop partway through?
No, I must be imagining things.
“The rest is in your hands.”
I bowed respectfully to the elder elf as he left the workshop.
“A pink flowerrr!”
“Mine has a yellow paw mark, sir.”
“Mm. Rabbit.”
“The chick design on mine is the winner, I insist.”
The girls were showing one another the embroidered designs I’d put on each of their Magic Bags at the sewing workshop.
They were modeled after a cute pochette; the flap could be unbuttoned, allowing for large things to be put in or taken out.
The sewing workshop had plenty of dyes, so the younger girls and Nana chose bright colors.
Arisa went for a dramatic black base with a red line, while Lulu’s and Liza’s bags were a sophisticated brown.
The main body of the bag was already complete, so it took only a few minutes to sew everything up.
“User registration now.”
“…User registration?” I repeated.
“Required.”
The elf assistant nodded.
Just as the name implied, this feature restricted the opening and closing of the Magic Bag to the individual registered as its owner.
That seemed useful, so I thought maybe I could add the same feature to the girls’ weapons and any dangerous magic tools. Unlike Holy Swords that were gifted from gods, the ones I made had no restrictions on who could use them.
In addition to this type, which linked the magic tool to its registered user, there was also a kind that utilized a magic tool as a key. The key I’d been given for the alchemy archives was one example of this.
Since I wanted to try it, I decided to use that kind for the game-carrying bag, which everyone would be sharing.
Using a key-style ring would be fashionable, too.
“Now our Fairy Packs are finally finished!”
Arisa struck a triumphant pose with her completed bag. Not very ladylike.
“Fairy Pack?” The assistant elf blinked.
“Well, yeah.” Arisa smiled confidently. “‘Magic Bag’ sounds kind of dull, since the elves made them for us and all. ‘Fairy Pack’ has a much nicer ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Understood.”
The assistant elf was the only one to respond, but the other apprentices were all smiling, so I guess they had no objections.
Thus, our group’s Magic Bags were renamed Fairy Packs.
“Is Satou here?!”
The peaceful mood in the Magic Bag workshop was interrupted when someone came bursting through the door.
It was the engineer who’d promised to teach me how to make wands back at the magic-tool studio.
“Yes, right here.”
Something seemed to be the matter, so I raised a hand and walked over to the entrance.
“Sorry, but can you come with me, please? Lady Aaze is—”
“Yes, of course! Where do I need to go?!”
I hadn’t seen Aialize in a few days. As soon as her name was mentioned, my composure went out the window.
I zipped over to him with “Warp” and charged to the fairy ring before he could recover from his surprise.
Wait for me, Aialize! I’m coming!
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