Chapter 47

“Hey, you got that? This is really going to be okay, right?”

Kururu’s hesitant voice echoed across the grassland a little ways away from town, with the mine visible in the distance.

It was poor land, rocky and full of groves, useful for little more than letting goat herders release their goats.

That was land Iiria had bought from a merchant in town with the proceeds from the magic stone sales.

And now, standing there were Kururu dressed as a magician, and Kengo with his upper body bare.

“Bring it on!”

Kengo, standing in a way that supported Kururu’s back, said exactly that.

Kururu still looked uneasy, but in the end she held both hands forward and gripped the magic stone.

That magic stone was, of course, a synthetic magic stone formed from the powder of worthless scrap magic stones that could not be sold as merchandise.

“Whatever happens, happens! Wind!”

When Kururu shouted in a reckless manner, smoke that looked black or perhaps purple burst out of the magic stone in her hand.

Right after that, an impact that could hardly be called wind struck my face and body, and I was sent sprawling like a mannequin placed near a nuclear test site.

Kengo, who had been full of confidence, ended up in much the same state, but still.

Apparently he had not let go of Kururu, who had been blown away by the recoil of the magic, and had properly fulfilled the role of a wall of flesh.

“…Owowowow…”

When I got up, narrowing my eyes against the pebbles still pattering down onto my head, there was a huge crater stretching out in front of the place where Kururu had been standing.

“That’s amazi—”

If someone tried to do this with civil engineering work, there was no telling how long it would take.

Even if saying as far as the eye could see was an exaggeration, a hole deeper than my own height had spread over quite a distance.

“…A third-grade magic stone is too much. A fourth-grade one, or if we’re thinking safety, a fifth-grade one would do.”

When I turned toward the voice, there was Kengo sitting up cross-legged.

And when I looked for Kururu, she was dizzy from the recoil of the magic and was lying on Kengo’s lap.

“But, what was it again? More important than the power of the magic itself, what matters is how many times you use magic, right?”

Apparently Kururu had no talent as a magician, but from what I had heard, a magician’s ability was closer to the ability to create the trigger that draws out the power of a magic stone.

It somehow reminded me of a fire starter used to make a spark.

At any rate, it seemed that producing that ignition spark took the same amount of effort whether the magic was huge or tiny.

On that point, Kururu apparently would be out of fuel after using one or two spells a day.

It seemed that talented magicians had high ignition ability, so they could unleash great power all at once even from a small magic stone, and could do so many times in a day.

“We might have no choice but to do it little by little every day. If it causes a commotion like this every time, somebody’s going to get hurt eventually.”

Kururu, who had been dizzy on Kengo’s lap, finally came to her senses.

“Uuuugh… hey!”

Kururu, lying with her head in his lap, glared at Kengo.

“You didn’t protect me at all! What was all that about leaving it to you!”

“My muscles protected you. Are you hurt?”

Whether being blown back several meters could really be called protected was debatable, but it was true that he had rolled with Kururu in his arms like something out of a hero action scene.

“I’m not, but… next time it’d be better to leave it to Dodol or someone else.”

“Eh? Come on, have faith in my muscles!”

Kururu escaped from Kengo’s overbearing intensity, found the wig she had been using for her disguise, picked it up and put it back on, then came over to my side.

“You, are you hurt?”

“Thanks to you, no.”

Kururu let out a snorting sigh through her nose and turned her gaze toward the result of her magic.

“Magic is… incredible.”

I agreed.

“But Kengo is right.”

“Eh?”

“Eventually someone will get hurt. I’d like to seek proper instruction from a formal magician.”

Kururu opened and closed her hand and stared at it.

“Thinking about it normally, there should be some way to control the recoil of magic, right? If I get blown away like this every time, I won’t last. If I used a second-grade magic stone, the magician herself would probably be blown to pieces in an instant.”

I shuddered as I imagined Kururu, with her beautiful skin and silver hair, turning into something like flour.

“That’s true. I wonder how they handle it.”

Magic stones were apparently active military weapons, and were regularly used on battlefields.

“If you look around town, there ought to be someone who has served in the military. If you asked them, maybe you’d learn something.”

Kengo got up and brushed himself off, and even as he looked at the hole Kururu had made, he wore a troubled smile.

“After that, if we draw water here from the river, we could make a huge reservoir. If we irrigate it, crops should grow here too.”

“We’ll need to make a map and do surveying too. We’ll have to decide the water route and arrange for a waterwheel as well, right?”

“And then a fish-farming pond too. If we can catch river fish and not just sea fish, the food situation will be more stable.”

It had been near the end of winter when I came back to life in the mine. Because of that, I had not known, but apparently from autumn into winter the seasonal winds grew stronger and the sea became quite rough. When that happened, the number of days people could not go fishing increased, imports were delayed, and the dining tables throughout Jirenu Territory became miserable.

And if they merely became miserable, that would still be one thing, but if a food shortage hit directly, it meant everyone would starve.

“You two are diligent.”

Kururu, who had been watching Kengo and me talk, muttered that.

“No, it’s more like we knew the path we should walk from the beginning.”

When I exchanged glances with Kengo, who had seen the same world and the same era as I had, a wry smile naturally came to both of us.

“We just happened to live in that kind of world.”

Kururu stared at us, then turned away in a displeased manner.

“Talk about a world I can’t know.”

“…”

I was a little surprised when Kururu said that and put distance between us.

“…Is she sulking or something?”

When I whispered that to Kengo, he only shrugged.

“Kururu-chan may not look it, but she’s more dog-like than Iiria-chan.”

He probably meant that she had a strong sense of comradeship.

For a little while now, whenever Kururu heard about the world Kengo and I had come from, she had begun to look displeased. Maybe she felt left out, unable to join in when Kengo and I shared stories about our previous world.

“Why don’t you explain things to her, Kengo?”

Kengo treated Kururu like a niece, and they seemed to get along fairly well one way or another.

But in an instant Kengo’s eyes turned flat, and he looked exasperated.

“Honestly, you really are…”

“W-What?”

Kengo snorted and said, “Nothing.”

“It looks like we can leave the rest of the work that requires manual labor to the beastfolk.”

“R-right. Can I ask you to coordinate with them?”

“The mine could use a few more hands too… well, I guess we’ll manage.”

“The new vein, right?”

“Yeah, yeah! It looks really promising!”

Kengo’s face lit up all at once.

“I know the magic stone processing can’t keep up even if we increase output any more, but I still want to move forward with test digging. If people know there’s a fertile vein there, it’ll also raise the motivation of everyone working in the mine.”

As long as the mine continued, their work would be guaranteed.

Besides, it probably felt more worthwhile when magic stones came out in droves than when scraping away at a mine that was nearly exhausted.

“Then on my side, I’ll make arrangements for the fish-farming pond and for the waterwheel and all the other materials. If we rely on the Bax Company it’ll probably be expensive, so I hope we can find craftsmen in town.”

“And magic too.”

He bumped me hard with his shoulder, making me stagger.

Up ahead, near the horse we had ridden from town, Kururu was standing alone kicking pebbles in a dissatisfied way.

“Even if Kururu-chan wants to learn about magic, magicians are half under the jurisdiction of the church. It’d be hard for her to go to the church by herself, right?”

“That’s… true.”

There was also the matter of the legendary magic circle.

“Well then, I’m heading back to the mine like this.”

“Eh? Ah, right.”

With that, Kengo had already started walking off at once, and after seeing his back off, I turned my gaze back to Kururu. Kururu glanced at me, then noticed Kengo’s retreating figure and narrowed her eyes.

“What, is he going back to the mine? Without even eating…”

Maybe it really would have been better to leave Kururu to Kengo after all.

That was what I was thinking when Kururu untied the horse, lightly climbed onto its back, and then skillfully rode it over in front of me.

“Get on.”

It felt like a situation with the genders completely reversed, but since I had never ridden a horse before, I could not mount it by myself and had to borrow a hand from the exasperated-looking Kururu to somehow get onto its back.

“Don’t grab anything weird.”

Kururu said that as she looked back over her shoulder, leaving me a little unsure where to put my hands.

I felt awkward about clinging to a girl her age, but if I grabbed her tail, she would probably kick me off.

Still, I thought it might be bad to avoid her too much, so I timidly put my arms around her waist.

Kururu immediately took hold of my hands, adjusted where they were, and then set the horse running.

“You and Kengo both can’t ride horses, right?”

While I was flustered by Kururu’s high body heat and oddly sweet scent, she spoke to me.

If she had not been wearing the wig for her disguise and the ragged cloak over herself, my heartbeat might have been in even greater danger.

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

“Your strange knowledge is on the level of nobility. And not just you, but apparently Kengo too was a citizen with a family name, and yet you can’t ride horses? What kind of world was that?”

I had ridden a pony before, but I did not say so.

“Well… what can I say…”

I had no good way to explain it.

However, Kururu apparently did not take my hesitation as coming from a very good reason.

“No, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”

The horse seemed to start running even faster, and I hurriedly spoke.

“It’s not that I don’t want to say it. It’s a problem of words.”

Bridging the gap in civilization was extremely difficult.

For example, if I tried to explain a car, was I supposed to give the usual explanation of it being an iron horse? Once I started thinking things like that, I got tongue-tied.

And if I were asked to explain modern concepts of citizenship or that sort of thing, there was nothing to do but hesitate.

“There’s still so much I don’t understand about this world too.”

Communication itself was not a problem, but there were plenty of words I did not know.

The horse was still galloping, but I felt as if it had eased just a little.

“It can’t be helped.”

“Eh?”

Kururu only glanced back at me.

“I’ll teach you the words you don’t know.”

“…”

“In exchange, teach me about your world.”

Kururu may not look it, but she’s more dog-like than Iiria.

Kengo’s words came back to me.

“Yes, please.”

Had Kururu overheard that conversation or not?

She narrowed her eyes, shrugged, and turned back to face forward.

“Hold on tight!”

“Eh? Wah—”

To be honest, being on a horse that was speeding up was terrifying.

Forgetting all embarrassment, I clung tightly to Kururu, and it felt as though there was a vibration in her back besides the pounding of the horse’s hooves.

I realized she was laughing, but the terror of being on a horse at full speed left me no room to think about it.

Kururu really was the athletic type after all. No, riding a horse around and taking such delight in it made her seem more like a delinquent type.

Thinking that, all I could do as an indoor type was cling to Kururu’s slender body and pray that we would reach town soon.