Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Magian Company - Volume 6 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

[The Root of Happiness]

By virtue of its top speed of Mach 7, the small jet transporting Tatsuya and his companions arrived in Japan in two hours. Owing to the time difference, it was already late at night by the time they landed on Miyakishima.

Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Lina went straight to their usual residence there, Hyougo went to the accommodation reserved for him. It was not until the next morning that they resumed their activities.

Waiting for Tatsuya was a stack of documents to be processed. Although there was no such thing as a paper document piling up in a stack on his desk, as it used to be the case in the last century, the authorization forms came with reports that were several times larger in data size than the documents themselves. No wonder Fujibayashi was in such a rush in his absence. Even with his processing power, he could never go through all the pending decisions this morning alone.

"…Thank you for your hard work, Tatsuya-sama."

At the lunch table, Miyuki thoughtfully attends to Tatsuya. Lina is also present, but she only gives Tatsuya a look of mild sympathy. Perhaps an attempt to show some distinction from the way she usually treated Tatsuya without being particularly considerate or rude to him. 

However, there was no change to her facial expression or tone of voice toward Tatsuya. On the surface, few would consider Lina particularly cold-hearted.

"Miyuki, do me a favor."

This sentence was also casual.

"Yes, anything."

So Miyuki responded in her usual tone without any particular tension.

"When the line to Takachiho is available, could you ask Minoru and Minami to come down to Miyakishima? I have something to say about the ruins of Shambhala to all of you."

Now her expression grew somber, she understood from his voice that this was no trivial matter.

"What time should the meeting be?"

"Three o'clock, please. I should have all the paperwork done by then."

"Understood."

Miyuki bowed politely.

Not only her, Lina had stopped eating and had a mysterious look upon her as well.

◇ ◇ ◇

The table of five is served cold drinks by Hyougo. Minami looks uncomfortable, likely because being a "maid" remains part of her identity.

"Please, Hyougo-san, have a seat as well."

Tatsuya stopped Hyougo from leaving the room after he was finished serving the drinks.

Hyougo refrained from making a point of being reserved, with a "as you wish, sir" he took a seat, not at a table, in a spare chair in the corner of the room. Tatsuya wasted no further time nor energy on both sides in asking him to serve himself a drink, as he knew it would be futile.

"The search for Shambhala is not over yet."

Said Tatsuya right away, without even a first sip of his drink.

"Eh, what do you mean?"

The first reaction came from Lina.

"Didn't you obtain the Legacy of Shambala in Bukhara, in Uzbekistan?"

Minoru followed with his question. His tone was subdued, unlike Lina's, but the surprise was still there.

"Yes, I did. I acquired one of the Legacies."

"…That wasn't the only ruin of Shambala?"

Now it is Miyuki's turn to bring her own question with great, unconcealed surprise.

"Let me start by explaining the real nature of what we'd call Shambhala."

Rather than answering her directly, Tatsuya went on as such.

Miyuki, as well as the other three at the table adjusted themselves in their seats in their own way. Hyougo was not included among those, because he had been in such a position from the very beginning.

"The word 'Shambala' in Tibetan can be interpreted as [Immersed in the root of happiness]."

"If I recall correctly, isn't [root of happiness] a moniker for Shiva, one of the main deities of Hinduism?"

Apparently Minoru is also familiar with the etymology of the word Shambhala.

"Indeed."

"So it is, after all, the holy land of the Shiva sect?"

It was probably a question that had been on his mind for a while that now unintentionally spilled out.

"Not quite, in this case it would be better to interpret it as having a more direct meaning."

"You mean that there is something, or maybe someone, that brings happiness to people, and the land protected by it is Shambhala…?"

Tatsuya nodded in agreement with Miyuki's guess and replied, "Both."

"You mean a place where the rulers used special skills and knowledge to govern the land…? Stop with all the suspense and tell it already, Tatsuya."

Growing impatient, Lina demanded for him to explain the rest of the story.

Yet, Tatsuya was not playing for suspense as she put it.

"Shambhala is a kind of shelter built all over the world."

"All over the world?"

"What on earth are those shelters to protect from?"

Lina and Minoru asked their questions in succession.

As for Miyuki and Minami, they stared at Tatsuya, waiting for him to continue with his explanation.

"Shambhala was built in several areas that today range from mid-latitudes to high latitudes. The time frame is only a vague estimate, but based on the knowledge obtained in Bukhara, I estimate that it lasted between 35,000 and 15,000 years ago."

"Did it really last 20,000 years?"

Lina asks in a skeptical tone.

"The records say it wasn't in the same place all the time, but that it was abandoned and rebuilt several times over."

"Then Shambhala would mean a generic term for a shelter, not a name of a piece of land?"

"I think it'd be more accurate to say that's what the people in later periods called the shelters of that time."

"You said thirty-five thousand years ago, that would be right in the middle of the last glacial period… Could Shambala have been a shelter for people to escape the cold of the Ice Age?"

Minoru takes the podium from Lina as the person asking the question.

"That's right. Shambala was a shelter where magic ensured people's living and production environment ."

"…It does make sense in a number of ways, I think. If we consider that the legend of Shambhala as an ideal land surrounded by snowy mountains, and the fact that the Arctic region was considered as a candidate site, if we partially ignore the description of the Kalachakra Tantra, it would surely reflect the memory of an extremely cold natural environment that occurred during the glacial period, when everything was buried in snow and ice."

Minoru keenly acknowledged Tatsuya's answer.

"So… Was Shambhala a country founded on magic?"

"I'd say more of a city-state than a country, but yes, it certainly seems that mageists were in charge of running society."

Tatsuya first makes a small correction before answering Miyuki's question.

"A monarchical kingdom where mageists serve as nobility?"

Lina interjects past Miyuki.

"Mageists in Shambala were guaranteed a secure livelihood in exchange for maintaining shelters. I cannot say yet whether they enjoyed preferential treatment over other residents, but I suppose they could be considered a type of nobility."

"I wonder if the gods we see in various mythologies might be inspired by the mageists from Shambhala?"

"That's something I can neither confirm nor deny. There might be some elements like that in some myths, but I don't think it applies to all myths."

"That's very cautious of you."

"It's a delicate issue. Besides, this is not what we need to think about right now."

"Then what would be the issue you want to discuss, Tatsuya-sama?"

Minami reservedly asked, bringing all back to the main point.

"What I have just told you was what was written in the history books that we found in the ruins in Bukhara. But historical records were not the only thing we found in the ruins. There were also records left behind of unknown magic."

"Tatsuya-sama, have you learned a new magic!?"

"No, I just picked it up."

Miyuki asked joyfully, but Tatsuya's answer was a "no" in a strange way.

"What do you mean?"

As it is usually the case, it falls to Lina to unreservedly ask about the points that she doesn't understand.

"I'll explain in parts."

Lina was not the only one listening attentively after these words were spoken.

"The stone tablets fastened to the wall of the runs incorporated the same function of imparting magic as that of the [Guru's Tablet]. Each tablet held one magic each, totaling 12 magic stored in that place. However, each magic was of the nature that it would lodge in your Magic Calculation Area."

"…You mean that they would occupy a part of the Magic Calculation Area, and thus would hinder you from using other magics like your [Decomposition] and [Regrowth], Tatsuya-sama?"

"Exactly. Taking my magical computing area as an example, one magic is expected to occupy one-third of its total capacity. Though, I can't install anything when my magical calculation area is already taken up. If I were to install even one, there's a chance I'd lose either [Decomposition] or [Regrowth] in the process. Which is just not worth it."

"Tatsuya-sama… Could it be that, right now, you could install the magic that we obtained from the ruins?" Is there a way to do that?"

"By install, do you mean that you can have the magic memorized in a magician's mind like you would install software in a computer?"

"Yes, it's possible."

Tatsuya's answer addressed both Miyuki and Lina's questions simultaneously.

"For the sake of convenience, let's call this magical civilization of the time of the creation of the shelters the [Shambhala civilization], since we don't have alternatives at this point. In this Shambhala civilization, magic was at the core of maintaining the environment for their subsistence, thus they had established a technology to transmit magic in a quick and reliable manner. Take the [Guru's Tablet], for example, which was also made with this technique of the Shambhala civilization."

"So, the tablets in the ruins were also [Guru's Tablets] after all?"

Tatsuya shook his head in a "No" to Miyuki's question.

"The technical level employed is quite different. In the sense that [Guru's Tablet] is a simplified version, meant to be portable, while the technology used in the ruins is several degrees more advanced."

"Like the difference between a mainframe and a personal computer?"

"It's a bit of an outdated metaphor… but, well, something like that."

At Lina's interjection, Tatsuya nodded, leaking a chuckle in the process.

"But Tatsuya-sama. If the stone tablets in the ruins were something like a desktop computer in this analogy, wouldn't it be impossible to access them from a distance?"

Miyuki raises a legitimate question.

"There are remote terminals."

Tatsuya's answer would not be out of place if they were dealing with a piece of modern, that is, 21st-century technology.

"How can those ruins even have such a thing…?"

"Here you go."

Tatsuya casually let the [Wand] they brought back from the ruins rest on the table.

"With this wand ─ or more precisely, with the Cintamani stone attached to the staff, you can summon the daemons 2in the ruins."

"Daemon, you say…?"

"You are not speaking of demons3, are you?"

Miyuki and Lina tilted their heads in sequence.

Minami had question marks glued all over her face, Minoru demanded an answer with an intense gaze.

"By that I mean an information body that is not associated with any natural phenomena, that may probably fall under the notion of demons or the Shinto take on divine spirits, but of all the forms we are familiar with, they are closest to something like artificial spirits."

"In short, do you mean that these are independent information bodies possessing magical abilities, created by the Shambala civilization?"

Minoru was the first to catch on to Tatsuya's remarks.

"They are created by modularising a magic sequence along with the function to draw interference power from a mageist into an independent information body. Then it is implanted and parasitizes the magic calculation area. And there you go, the magic transmission system of the Shambhala civilization."

"Parasite4!?"

Lina exclaimed, almost jumping out of her seat.

Miyuki next to her was left speechless.

"[Daemon] would be this modularised independent information body, right? I see… I suppose that's an appropriate name."

Minoru said with a deep nod.

"It's very likely the [Guru's Tablet] operates with a similar system. When Miyuki knocked out the [Babel] caster in Alameda, California, the information body that slipped out of their body and vanished was surely the daemon that enabled the use of [Babel]."

With Tatsuya's words, Minoru adds, "speaking of which…"

"I wonder if the [familiar] I saw escaping the body of a FAIR BS mageist in San Francisco could also have been a daemon of the Shambhala civilization."

"There may be more than a few stray daemons floating around, similar but unbound like the ones in grimoires like the [stone tablets], haunting and possessing humans."

"Would a child parasitized by such daemons become a BS mageist…?" 

Miyuki's body shudders at the thought when she hears Tatsuya's speculation.

"Excuse me…"Minami reservedly asked for a word.

"What is it?" "What is the matter?"

Tatsuya and Minoru urged her to continue at the same time.

"Could it be that even the parasites we are have also been a product of a prehistoric magical civilization?"

"…It's too early to say anything."

Tatsuya didn't outright deny the possibility that Minami had mentioned.

"If that were true… No, it's nothing."

Tatsuya could guess what Minoru was about to say before stopping himself.

"At any rate, this wand has the function to invoke daemons and make them parasite on magicians."

Precisely because he could surmise, he didn't ask for the rest, or let it be asked, he brought the conversation back to the main point.

─If the parasites we know are in fact the daemons of the Shambhala civilization, there may also be among their [Legacy] a way of turning parasites back into human beings. But, until we find conclusive indications of a way, we ought not discuss that possibility.

"Can the wand be used on, like, anyone?"

Not that Lina was aware of the intentions on the part of Tatsuya and Minoru. She merely asked Tatsuya with earnest interest as a mageist.

"Like, for example, to install on a mageist without their consent?"

If what she suggested were possible, depending on the kind of magic installed, it would be possible to use it to limit the capabilities of a hostile mageist.

"The consent of the person is necessary. Plus, this wand registered me as the owner, so it can't be used by anyone else unless I authorize it."

"So, if you authorize it, even I can use it?"

"It does allow for a temporary loan option."

"So, Tatsuya-sama, are you wondering who should be allowed to acquire the magic of the ruins?"

Miyuki raises the crux of the matter with her question.

"Those ruins are, if you will, a heaven-sent library for civilian researchers. On the other hand, there was no safe place to store dangerous magic that could be used anytime in military applications."

"Even the Shambhala civilization, which is known as a utopia, had military power?"

Miyuki asks incredulously.

"I can't possibly say right now who their enemies might have been, but they are described as having an extremely powerful military."

Tatsuya's answer refutes the utopian vision of them.

"But that particular library didn't have it. That said, Shambhala is not a single nation, but rather a plurality of city-states, there are surely other facilities left behind."

"In other words, there are still a number of other ruins that house dangerous magic that can be converted into military power in today's world, right?"

Minoru poses the question with a serious expression.

"Exactly. Which is why I asked Minoru and Minami to come down to discuss possible measures to take."

This answer from Tatsuya did more than just affirm the question.

"Do you know the location of the ruins with the dangerous ones, Tatsuya-sama?"

Perhaps because her own name was mentioned, Minami uttered this question ahead of Miyuki and Lina.

"I don't know the exact location of the facility themselves, but a history book from the library in Bukhara at least tells me where to start looking."

"Where that might be?"

This time it was Minoru asking.

"The capital of Tibet, Lhasa. Beneath the Potala Palace."

Again, this time, Tatsuya is quick to answer.

"I can't say precisely how deep, but there is a [information center] for the ruins there. If we reach there, we should be able to find out about the operational facilities, including the ruins that have been destroyed."

"That's why you called me, isn't it? So I can sneak into Lhasa and find out the location of the other ruins at that information center?"

Minoru was looking forward to the request even before it was stated. He had already infiltrated Lhasa last month. On that occasion, he had a tough time just escaping against two of the Great Asian Union's [Bāxiān] combat magicians. Perhaps this was Minoru's motivation to make up for it.

"Am I supposed to accompany Minoru-sama?"

"No, not at all."

Tatsuya denied Minami's question.

"I will be the one to infiltrate the basement of the Potala Palace. Minoru will be accompanying me, and I'll be asking for Minami to support us from Takachiho."

"That's absurd!"

Miyuki rushed to halt Tatsuya.

"She's right, Tatsuya. You are a public figure. Even if you are confident in your abilities, if your infiltration is exposed, it'll be no small affair."

Lina joins in to talk him out of it.

"It may be reckless, but it's necessary. In order to enter the Information Center in Lhasa, a person with Ownership authority must be there with the wand. If the information from the library is correct, the door will not open with loaned authority. That's just how the security is set up."

They could understand from what he said why Tatsuya had to go so far. They also understood that he could not leave the risks he was concerned about unattended.

"I have no qualms. I will accompany you all the way to the basement of the Potala Palace."

"And I'll do my best to play my support role as well."

Both Minoru and Minami accepted Tatsuya's request.

Both Miyuki and Lina could not oppose it.