Chapter 116

After returning to Iiria’s mansion, no one spoke right away.

It felt as though what they had witnessed was too immense, and they could not properly swallow it down.

“What should we do?”

Iiria finally opened her mouth, but those words contained many different meanings.

What should Jirenu Territory do?

And what should those living in the present age do?

“There is at least one thing we know.”

“One thing we know?”

“It will be difficult for us to revive the grand magic circle immediately with our own hands.”

Kengo narrowed only one eye and looked at me.

“So it might be possible with hands other than ours?”

That reservation seemed to bother him.

“For now, I think the most likely candidate is the church. See, if we believe this world’s myth-like stories, while empires have fallen again and again, only the church seems to have continued unbroken, and the one who granted magic to humans was the god they speak of.”

At the very least, the mysterious writing carved into the magic stone had not been a completely meaningless pattern.

If so, Luano’s guess that the large-scale magic circle was unlikely to be some fake created by someone for amusement should have been a sound idea.

That meant the church, which had lasted the longest in this world, became the most likely suspect.

“Hmm… But if that’s the case, isn’t it strange that the church is still displaying ancient grand magic circles? Even if they modified them so they wouldn’t activate, they would still be clues for analysis, right?”

Falone’s words, that one would not write insults about one’s wife, were true.

If the church had solved the mystery of the magic circles and was keeping that secret, continuing to display large-scale magic circles felt like it did not add up.

If they truly wanted to hide them, they should not display them anywhere.

“Then does that mean the church hasn’t solved the secret of the magic circles either?”

After Iiria said that, she suddenly looked puzzled.

“Huh…? But even if it hasn’t been solved, there’s still the possibility that it’s real, right? If so, then continuing to display it really is… Uu…?”

Like a puppy getting dizzy while trying to bite its own tail, Iiria held her head.

But I understood Iiria’s confusion well.

I thought our thoughts were going in circles because we lacked the necessary clues.

“Well, in any case.”

Kengo uncrossed his arms and spoke while stroking the beard that Kururu disliked.

“I said what I did in front of Falone and the others, but I don’t think we should get too deeply involved in this matter.”

Iiria and Kururu looked surprised, but I had somehow expected as much.

Kengo looked wild, but he was unexpectedly cautious.

“They say this large-scale magic or whatever can do things like rewind time left behind by the great spirits. There are plenty of stories in the history of our previous world about people ruining countries in pursuit of immortality and things like that.”

Right now, only Falone and the other three were researching magic.

But as Jirenu Territory grew larger, they might increase the number of personnel for research, eventually require large-scale experiments, and the finances might collapse.

I thought that probably was not an especially impossible story.

Because one only had to think about it.

At the brothel in Roran, thanks to the quick thinking of the formidable old madam, Kururu had gained a chance to rescue Iiria.

But that had been pure luck, and there should have been more than enough futures where Kururu would never be able to smile again.

At that time, would I have been able to avoid chasing a spell that could rewind time, or perhaps erase memories, even if I had to throw everything away?

The warning not to pursue the secrets of magic rang out with tremendous weight.

On the other hand, I thought about something else at the same time.

When told not to think about a white bear, it was difficult not to think about a white bear.

And above all, I did not know whether Gerario would accept it.

Those battle-hardened warriors must already have countless reasons to need grand magic.

I slowly took a bird’s-eye view of the situation, drew in a deep breath, and said,

“No, let’s pursue it.”

At my words, everyone raised their eyes.

“There are two reasons. First, I don’t think keeping this matter secret from Gerario-san and the others is a good plan. Because for Gerario-san and the others, they probably have many more urgent reasons to pursue this matter than we do. When you think about it that way, if we kept this matter secret and, by some chance, it leaked to Gerario-san and the others afterward…”

I slowly looked around at everyone’s faces.

“Those people would see us as untrustworthy traitors.”

Gerario was far too valuable a person to lose, and at the same time, he was someone we absolutely must not make an enemy of.

And as a simple matter, Gerario was a good person.

Because I believed he trusted us, I thought we had to answer that trust.

“That is… Kururu, what do you think?”

For now, the one closest to Gerario was probably Kururu, his disciple who was learning magic from him.

After Iiria directed the question to her, Kururu let out a tired sigh.

“That vulgar master is as simple as a boar. What Yorinobu says is very easy to imagine.”

It was a harsh way to speak about her master, but rather, I felt that for Kururu, she probably admired Gerario quite a lot.

“Yorinobu, what’s the other one?”

I nodded at Kengo’s question, then answered.

“It’s better to pursue it in a planned way from now than to fall into some terrible situation where we desperately want large-scale magic, then panic and chase after it without caring about appearances.”

At those words, the room fell silent as though water had been poured over it.

That was probably because everyone had faintly understood it in their heads.

This world was merciless, unforgiving, and unpredictable.

Irreparable things could easily happen, and someday, surely, they definitely would.

When that time came, there was no way we could choose not to pursue a large-scale magic circle that might be able to cause a miracle.

“I think we should stop making excuses. If an incredible magic might exist, we can’t ignore it, and we can’t consciously forget something we’ve learned once.”

When I said that, Kengo quietly muttered, “A white bear, huh?”

It was a famous example even in self-help books, so Kengo seemed to know it too.

While laughing a little at that, I also had to face the white bear I could not ignore.

The cipher Falone and the others had decoded said this.

A method to obtain knowledge from another world.

In other words, could there be a possibility that a large-scale magic circle could return us to our previous world?

What did Kengo think about that?

“That is why I think we should be rational, stay measured, and prepare for that day.”

The dice had already been cast.

Rather than averting our eyes from that fact and pretending to forget it, we should confirm what result those dice had produced, and if possible, we should reach out our hands to get the result we wanted.

And yet no one opened their mouth, because this matter would decide the direction we would take just as much as it might decide the fate of the world.

And moreover, none of us knew at all what awaited us beyond that.

We had witnessed what a large synthetic magic stone engraved with a simple magic circle could bring about in the battle with Roran.

Then when a giant magic circle was engraved on a giant magic stone, there was no way one could imagine anything pleasant happening.

No matter how one thought about it, it could not possibly be something peaceful, like flowers blooming as far as the eye could see.

As everyone was unable to either deny or affirm my words, the large sigh that eventually sounded was, unexpectedly, Iiria’s.

“Making this kind of decision is my job, isn’t it?”

She was the fluffy girl who was probably the shortest and lightest person in the room.

But as Iiria sat in her chair, she certainly had the weight of a lord.

“In the end, not once has curling up while clutching my head ever made anything better. If something like that did happen, I think it was because someone raised their head and fought for me.”

The one Iiria looked toward as she said that was Kururu beside her.

After smiling at Kururu, Iiria continued speaking.

“We still don’t even know what will happen to this territory. The fact that we defeated Roran will definitely spread to the surrounding areas, so I think there is more than enough chance that some awful place will set its sights on us and drag us into something awful. For that time, I think grand magic is necessary. So I agree with Yorinobu’s proposal.”

Iiria looked straight at me.

That smile might have been a little different from the one she directed at Kururu, but it was also different from the one she wore when she usually came to nibble on me.

It was not affection, but trust.

Recently, she had begun jokingly calling me Lord Chancellor, but perhaps there was a certain amount of seriousness in it.

“I… well, I don’t intend to strongly oppose it. It’s something like needless worry from an old man. In the consulting field, I’ve seen any number of managers who ran out of things to do, got hooked on some strange religion, and ate through their assets.”

Kengo said that part in Japanese from the middle.

As I smiled wryly, Kengo switched back to this world’s language.

“I think Yorinobu’s view has a point too.”

In other words, Kengo was passively in favor.

“However, in that case, I think we should first search for the words that were apparently left in the depths of the old mines.”

“May I ask why?”

“Simply because while investigating the old mines, we might come across an abandoned mine where the vein is still alive. It could help fund the research, right?”

“Ah, I see.”

The matter of large-scale magic had been so immense that I had forgotten that possibility.

“We have the power of magic on our side here. Even abandoned mines that stopped being profitable might be revivable for us.”

Kururu looked at Kengo with an expression that seemed to say, I am the one who will be firing that magic, though.

“Jirenu Territory needs as much money as it can get, and no one knows how long the mines here will last. Securing a new mountain won’t hurt.”

Kengo was the mine supervisor.

More than anyone else, he knew that this island depended on its mines.

“So, well, after thinking about various things, I’m in favor.”

He said it in a somewhat teasing way, probably so the mood would not become too serious.

“I will follow Iiria-sama.”

Of course, I knew Kururu would answer that way.

Iiria smiled back and placed her own hand over Kururu’s.

“And you?”

Then Iiria directed her words to the person with the least presence in the room.

Cole.

“Eh?”

Cole probably had not expected to be asked for his opinion either.

He was clearly bewildered, blinking repeatedly.

The shadow of an arrogant noble was nowhere to be found anymore.

In other words, even when Cole was among our circle, he no longer felt out of place at all.

However, he was looking down as if he thought there was no way he could have the right to speak, so it seemed it would still take some time for the matters from the Nodon era to fade.

“Hey, Iiria-sama is asking you, isn’t she?”

Kururu glared at Cole like that and spoke harshly to him.

However, she did not tell him to shut up, nor that no one was asking him.

Iiria was smiling wryly beside her because Kururu’s lack of honesty was plain to see.

Kururu no longer thought of Cole as an outsider.

“Cole-san knows the outside of the island better than anyone. We need your opinion too, Cole-san.”

When I said that, Cole looked at me, then showed an awkward, forced smile.

Was that smile laughing at the impermanence of the world, where his position had reversed from someone who handed over silver coins as a reward to someone being treated with consideration?

Or perhaps he was laughing because, in Roran, no one had ever asked him for his opinion even once.

“I…”

Cole drew another breath and said,

“I think we should pursue it. However…”

He added,

“Carefully.”

That one word was likely not because he was a young master who used “I,” but because he was someone who knew the outside world.

“Then it’s decided?”

No one objected to Iiria’s question.

We were not leaving anything in writing, but it felt as though the direction we were heading had been decided forever.

“Grand magic, huh.”

After saying that, Iiria suddenly looked at her own chest.

“I wonder if there’s some kind of magic that lets you transform into whatever appearance you like.”

Along with exasperated laughter, several people voiced the opinion that such magic was unnecessary.