Chapter 109

I thought the sea dragon was apparently the only one after seeing what it was like when we went to the reef area again.

The seabirds that had not been there last time were loitering on the surface of the sea, and when I peered down from the boat, I could sometimes see things glittering.

The schools of small fish had returned, and the seabirds resting their wings between hunts was probably due to the ruler of the sea being gone.

“Well then, let’s do it without holding back.”

Standing at the prow, Kururu said that bravely with a synthetic magic stone in hand.

There were three boats in total. On the lead boat were me, Kururu, and Cole; on the second boat, Gerario was aboard in case a dragon was still there; and on the third boat were construction materials, along with Dodol and the beastmen who worked at the mine.

Cole also took a synthetic magic stone in hand, but he had a somewhat unconvinced look on his face.

“Is it really all right to use this terrifying technology for something like this?”

Synthetic magic stones could mass-produce and expand magic stones, which were supposed to be precious, as much as we wanted.

When I saw Balan boiling down seawater with magic, I had thought something similar to Cole.

But if something was at hand, it would be a waste not to use it.

“It certainly is terrifying technology, but this technology is not all-powerful either, so if we can use it, we should.”

“Not all-powerful, you say?”

Cole looked at me as though asking if I was joking.

“Certainly, not having to depend on the size of mined magic stones like before is amazing, but—”

The synthetic magic stones loaded onto the boat were made by powdering and kneading scrap magic stones that would have had no value before. It was almost the same as turning sand into gold.

“As a result of experiments, it seems there is a limit to the power if we simply make the magic stone and magic circle larger, and none of the legendary great magic circles activated.”

Even now, Falone, Luano, and the others were working hard to find rules from existing magic circles.

However, because the results had not been favorable, an atmosphere was starting to drift in that maybe great magic really was a fraud.

“That is……a subtle feeling, both disappointing and relieving.”

As a magician himself, Cole had probably once longed not merely for overwhelming power, but for magic beyond human understanding.

“So I was thinking we should use it more casually and thoroughly.”

“U-muuh……”

Perhaps because it went so far beyond the common sense of this world, Cole was bewildered like that.

“Hey, young master. What are you grumbling about?”

Kururu cut into the conversation, and while she was at it, slipped her hand in too.

She was taking a new synthetic magic stone out of the wicker trunk at our feet.

When I looked beyond her, a part of the sea had already frozen over.

“We are freezing the sea as far as the eye can see, all the way down to the seafloor. Do not make only me work.”

“……”

Cole sighed as though giving up and took a new magic stone in hand. Then he headed to the prow with Kururu and released magic. What they used was ice magic.

That was the idea.

To mine a mine that had sunk beneath the seafloor, I could only think of building scaffolding and using the arm strength of beastmen to drive iron stakes into the rock bed and break it, or firing magic into the sea and having free divers go pick up the fragments.

But when I saw Balan boiling down salt with magic, I realized there was no need to think seriously.

Because we could use magic more extravagantly, even in a way that could be called wasteful.

For example, if water was in the way and we could not mine, then why not freeze everything around it down to the seafloor, and after that mine it the same way as on land?

“Absurd.”

On the boat behind us, Dodol said that with his arms folded.

Before our eyes, the sea surface was steadily hardening white, and the seabirds flew off in annoyance, keeping their distance as they watched us.

The distance was fairly far, but I suddenly wondered whether Roran’s fleet could see us from where they were.

I could only imagine what they thought when they saw us begin freezing the sea.

After we had frozen the area to some extent, a beastman skilled at swimming jumped onto the ice as their representative and hopped several times to check its strength.

It seemed all right, so we brought the boat alongside it and landed too.

“Well then, everyone, please cut out the ice like bricks and stack it around the area like walls. We want to keep waves from entering the mining site.”

The beastmen holding saws and the like looked at one another, then started working while still looking somewhat puzzled.

“Will it not melt?”

Gerario, sleep-deprived from watching the fleet, got off the boat while yawning.

“This is also partly a test for that.”

“Fuwaah……well, magical ice is fairly strong. It should be fine for two or three days.”

“When I think about full-scale mining, it would be difficult to come here and freeze it every day, so I would like to do something like land reclamation.”

I felt that if we cut out ice around the place where we wanted to work, set wooden frames there, filled them with rock or gravel, and poured in cement, it might work.

I was sure there had been cement even in ancient Rome, so it should be possible to reproduce it here too.

I vaguely felt the materials were volcanic ash and quicklime, but I was not quite certain.

Quicklime could be obtained by burning eggshells or bones at high temperatures, so after that, volcanic ash?

No, was clay also fine? I searched my memory, but maybe this area should be left to the town’s craftsmen to figure out through trial and error.

“Still, if abandoned mines here and there can be revived with methods like this……it will become something incredible.”

Gerario said that with deep feeling while roughly stroking his chin beard.

“Even if a mine is said to be depleted, there may still be veins beneath our feet. If we can shoot huge magic as we please, there are any number of ways to do things.”

The reason that had not been possible until now was because magic stones with the power to open holes in mountains had been far too expensive.

It was as though we had obtained almost free energy.

“This thing you found really is too amazing. My head cannot properly imagine how it should be used.”

Dodol had called it absurd, and the beastmen doing the work also seemed bewildered.

Even Cole had been confused about whether it was acceptable to use such technology for something like this.

But using synthetic magic stones only as weapons would be far too wasteful.

I was thinking that it would be better to gather many more magicians, and have people who could not use magic join in too, so that all kinds of trial and error could be done.

At that moment—

It seemed the ice cutting had reached the reef, and the beastmen switched from saws to pickaxes and began breaking the rock.

“Oh, they reached the rock. Since a dragon appeared, I think it should be a fairly fertile mine, but how will it be?”

Gerario hurriedly walked over that way.

Gerario was a hard worker in one way or another, so once it came time for actual mining, he might come here every day to fire ice magic.

As I was wondering whether he would work for his current pension, Kururu came over.

“Yorinobu, how far should we go?”

When I looked at what she meant, a considerable area had already been frozen.

Right now, Cole was firing magic toward the northeast, probably the direction where Roran was located, but his back looked quite small.

“Huh, already that much?”

“The reef continues from here toward there, but it is not that deep. Freezing it is not difficult. Or—”

Kururu shook the magic stone in her hand.

“Should we make an ice road all the way to Roran like this? Direction-wise, it should be that way. Those fellows would surely be stunned.”

When she smiled, her pointed canine teeth showed, and she looked every bit like a mischievous catgirl.

The frightening part was that this was probably only half a joke.

“It would also be good to make an ice road from the island to here. It would be more convenient than coming by boat every time.”

It would probably be fun if we could walk across the sea, but if we froze the sea on a large scale, the tides might change, and if some accident happened, being at sea would make it irreversible.

Even so, we could probably do it if we tried.

As expected, the power of the technology in our hands was too great, and I felt like I could not properly grasp the right distance from how to use it.

“If we can make large magic stones without restraint, the things we can do become too enormous, and it is a little frightening……”

“Is that so? I feel excited about what we can do.”

Kururu said that and looked around at the ice island we were currently creating, looking proud.

“Defeating enemies is fun too, but this kind of thing is nice as well. I would never have thought something like this was possible.”

Kururu said that, raised the magic stone in her hand, and released a little magic.

She seemed to have grown completely used to handling magic, and the ice at her feet creaked as it grew thicker.

“With this, we should be able to spend the summer comfortably too.”

“That is certainly true.”

Apparently, summer in Jirenu Territory became fairly hot.

Kururu, who had been kicking the ice at her feet with her toes, breathed out.

Since quite a wide area was frozen, the air was cold, and our breath turned white.

“If you are here, I feel like anything is possible.”

Kururu looked at me, said that, and smiled happily.

The abandoned mine sunk beneath the sea apparently seemed quite promising.

The mine on the island was certainly fertile too, but it was still a limited resource.

Mining the abandoned mine first would allow us to postpone the depletion of the island’s resources.

Since we could not put synthetic magic stones up for sale, the only way to earn gold coins was to export existing magic stones.

However, in order to build large ships, we would have to mine and sell magic stones heavily for a while.

We would probably have to produce magic stones at full capacity, using both the existing mine and this offshore mine.

Kengo was busy with the island mine, so for the offshore mine, we asked Gerario, who was a hard worker one way or another, and his partner Balan to take command.

As for the cement, we put up a public notice asking if anyone knew how to make it. Since Jirenu Territory had many drifters, someone might know.

While we were at it, since the amount of magic stones being mined would increase, we also had to increase the number of magic stone processors.

When we consulted the workshop masters, they gave us the reassuring reply that since a system had already been established for teaching complete novice boys the work, adding a few more people at this point would not change the trouble involved.

With peace of mind, we put up a public notice in the square and advertised for recruits.

The townspeople also seemed to have become completely used to these sorts of public notices appearing, and a crowd formed immediately, but the island’s population was inevitably limited.

Beside me, as I was thinking that we would soon hit a ceiling and perhaps should accept immigrants, Falone and the others were coming up with magic circle ideas one after another, so dealing with that was also busy.

And around the time the first magic stones mined from the abandoned mine were unloaded at the harbor, filling an entire boat—

A ship came from Roran in order to formally conclude the peace agreement.