Prologue

Yorinobu Takahashi was reincarnated into another world.

Having written it out like that, my pen stopped.

Making games had been my dream, and back in college I had even tried producing one while leading a club.

Well, back then it ended in an incredibly bitter mess, with the kind of overeagerness common among students, followed by everyone shoving the tedious work onto each other once it came time to actually do it, and a whole contest of excuses for why the work was not progressing.

Even now, on the verge of turning thirty, I still sometimes dreamed about how badly it had all blown up. Frankly, it was trauma.

Still, I had never quite given up on game development itself even after becoming a working adult, and I kept refining ideas at least in my head.

Of course, I never moved on to the actual work, and even those ideas never once reached completion.

I let myself get caught up in the busyness of everyday life, and nothing but time kept passing by.

And the more I wrote down my ideas, the more keenly I felt my own lack of talent.

The worlds I could build and the scenarios I could write were all just things that felt like reheated copies of something I had seen somewhere before.

But maybe now, I could make something far more incredible.

After all, standing before me now was a girl with mysterious silver hair like a snowy mountain on an overcast day, softly swishing the beast ears atop her head and the sleek tail growing from her waist in obvious good cheer.

“It seems the plan is proceeding smoothly.”

The girl said that while looking out through the open wooden window.

Beyond the wooden window stretched a vast worksite, where an astonishing number of people were at work.

No, to be precise, not only people were working there; some carried huge stones and clay tablets, while others held chisels and stonecutting tools, striking stone with sharp clacking sounds.

A little farther away, figures who looked every bit like ancient scholars let the hems of their robes flutter as they argued over complex geometric figures, going back and forth.

At that very moment, a great many were struggling there to give shape to the most complex concept in this world.

Namely, a legendary magic circle.

Or perhaps something that could be called a great calamity capable of destroying the world.

Magic was a special power once granted to this world’s inhabitants by someone who had been regarded as a god, a mystical secret art that had shaped the history of this world.

When I first awakened in this world one day, I had no special powers and no divine blessing, but I did have the useless knowledge I had stockpiled for making games.

And after that, some extraordinary connections with other people as well.

“What is it, you’re writing something like this again?”

The girl, who had been gazing meaningfully out the wooden window, looked at my hand and said that.

“You’ve never managed to write it even once.”

Whenever she spoke in that exasperated way, sharp canine teeth peeked out beneath her lips.

Back when we had first met, her fierce glare and those fangs had made me tremble.

“I feel like I can write it this time.”

When had it been that I first told this girl about the dream I had held in my previous world?

The concept of a modern game had not translated well in this other world without electricity, but when I explained it as something like a grand puppet play that we ourselves would control, she somehow understood.

“You’ve accomplished one impossible thing after another that absolutely no one else could have done, so why is this the one thing you can’t do?”

The girl looked rather baffled instead and traced the characters I had written with her finger.

It was written in Japanese, but apparently I had gotten stuck at the exact same opening so many times that even this girl from another world had completely memorized it.

“There’s a lot I want to write, but… maybe there’s too much…”

“Hm?”

How many years had passed since I came to this world?

My first meeting with this girl had been something truly awful too.

And yet, if not for that meeting, there would be no me as I was now, and more than that, the very state of this world itself would probably have become something entirely different from what it was now.

Because we were trying to witness a sight that no one in this world had ever seen before.

And precisely because of that, simply recording the great adventure that had brought us this far should have made for an incredible scenario and world setting.

And yet my hand always stopped the moment I finished writing the opening.

“Come on, playtime is over.”

The girl pulled the feather pen from my hand and roughly snapped the notebook shut.

If anyone else saw her acting like this, they might stare wide-eyed in shock.

Because, after all.

“There’s still a mountain of work left that only you can do. So get moving and work, Grand Chancellor-sama.”

The girl called me Grand Chancellor-sama in a tone that contained not the slightest shred of respect.

When I sighed, the girl shook with quiet laughter.

It was true that, somehow, I now held a position of authority.

This was one room in a lavish mansion, and not only the grounds outside the wooden window where crowds of people were working, but nearly all the land beyond the surrounding walls, as far as the eye could see, was mine to command.

I stood up and moved to leave the room after the girl, when I suddenly realized something.

Yorinobu Takahashi was reincarnated into another world.

Because I had suddenly hit upon the reason I could not write what came next.

“What’s wrong?”

The girl blinked in puzzlement.

With a wry smile, I shook my head.

The reason I could not write what came next was because I myself did not understand how I had managed to make it this far.

There had been cooperation with many people, effort that risked my life, and a great deal of luck.

None of those things were the sort that could ever be easily written down.

“It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go.”

The girl stared at me suspiciously, then apparently decided on her own that it was just one of my usual odd behaviors again.

We walked down the mansion’s long corridor.

Then the girl quietly took my hand.

This was how we had walked all this way.

And we would keep going farther still.

In another world, in order to create the most complex magic circle.