Chapter 60

The men of the sea who were good at free diving plunged into the water with ropes clenched in their teeth, tied them around the hulls, and then hauled them up close to the surface. The beastfolk aboard the boats took over from there, rowing with tremendous power to tow them toward the sandy beach near the harbor. The hardest part—dragging them out of the water and up onto the sand—was handled by the strongest among the beastfolk.

That division of labor worked splendidly, and in no time at all, four ships were lying on the beach like beached whales.

A harbor without ships coming and going was truly lonely and depressing, but if it was noisy and bustling, that alone was enough to make one feel more hopeful.

And then the salvage of Hunt’s merchant ship, the hardest case of the day, began.

Judging from the positions of the sunken ships, it seemed they were going to raise the one carrying cargo first.

If the dragon had appeared just two days later, Hunt would not have lost the wheat it had loaded.

The world was full of things like that.

That was why important things had to be dealt with quickly, I thought more strongly than ever now, as someone who had decided to resign in order to make games, only to awaken in another world instead.

And once I started thinking that way, it naturally meant I would finally begin tackling the various matters I had been putting off with thoughts like, once Jirenu Territory becomes stable…

“Just as you said, I secured the promise that they’ll hand over the taxes.”

While I was watching the salvage of the difficult ship, Iiria called out to me. After the tax meeting, there had apparently been a small banquet in thanks for salvaging and repairing the ships, but that too had ended. Both Iiria and Kururu looked sober, but when they came near, I caught the faint smell of alcohol on them.

As soon as she approached, Iiria smacked me in the side.

“So now you can hire the people you wanted, right?”

Her tone sounded reproachful, but she was probably not truly angry.

That said, it was not as though she was completely unangry either.

The reason for that lay in the purpose behind collecting taxes now, even somewhat forcefully if necessary, while the opportunity was there.

Owning a ship for the company itself was one reason, but funds were also needed for another plan.

“I don’t know at all how much it’ll cost, but it’ll probably be enough.”

At my words, both Iiria and Kururu let out sighs.

Kururu in particular looked dissatisfied.

“If you want to investigate magic circles, I’d be enough for that, wouldn’t I?”

What I had insisted ought to be hired urgently with the tax money were, first, civil officials who could support the management of the territory. And then personnel capable of analyzing the legendary magic circles preserved in the church—the people whose need had first become apparent because of the composite magic stones.

“Kururu-san, you’ve got all kinds of other work to do, right? And in my old world, there were people who had an extraordinary aptitude for this sort of thing.”

So-called mathematical geniuses.

People who could see through patterns ordinary people could not, by grasping the relationships between numbers and shapes.

Or perhaps people who simply could not help but see them through.

Mathematical ability could be cultivated after birth, but there really were people born geniuses from the very start. Friedrich Gauss, for example, had no shortage of famous anecdotes, and I had always liked the story of the legendary self-taught mathematician Ramanujan as well. He was a great man who had pioneered the frontiers of mathematics on his own despite receiving almost no formal education in it.

Surely even on this island, such people were buried somewhere unnoticed.

And in a populous place like the provincial capital, we would certainly find them.

“Unless we solve the mystery of the legendary giant magic circles, handling composite magic stones will remain difficult. Conversely, if we can unravel them, I think we’ll also find ways to use composite magic stones.”

I lowered my voice as I said that, since I had no idea who might overhear.

During the dragon subjugation, I had taken advantage of the confusion to have Kururu use a third-class-sized composite magic stone.

But in a calmer situation, Gerario would probably soon notice that Kururu was using a composite magic stone. I did think Gerario could be trusted, but it still felt too early to reveal that secret.

Using them furtively was inconvenient enough, but more than that, there was a frustration in having discovered the astounding technology of producing composite magic stones, while at present being unable to make direct use of it.

Because this knowledge could be imitated by anyone all too easily.

And since it made it possible to expand magic infinitely at explosive speed, it even made it easy to recreate the legendary giant magic circles preserved in the church.

When that fact became widely known, it was easy to imagine how people would act.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that simply continuing to hide it was not a sufficient answer either.

I knew the history of technology. Many great discoveries in the past had seen multiple people arrive at the same idea at the same time. The telephone was a prime example: several patents had been filed within only a few hours of each other.

It seemed that in Jirenu Territory’s mine, it had been the first time in a hundred years that a corpse had received a soul, according to the records. But if there were a hundred mines, it would not be strange if someone were reviving every single year. And there were probably more than a hundred mines.

I had no idea how many of the souls returning through those mines came from advanced scientific civilizations, but surely it was not zero. Which meant there was a possibility that someone revived before us had already noticed composite magic stones. And while I could not say for certain that such a person would be a mad scientist bent on destruction, the odds were even higher that they might be someone like Nodon, driven by greed for territory.

If that was the case, then analyzing giant magic circles was necessary even for the sake of protecting ourselves.

Because to deter an enemy from using nuclear weapons, you had to possess nuclear weapons of your own.

And besides, this analysis also contained a measure of hope—or rather, wishful thinking.

If it turned out that the legendary magic circles had been fabricated in later ages, fake circles invented only to lend authority, then the danger of composite magic stones would be greatly reduced.

Making a magic stone larger also increased the strength of the spell, so in that sense, a technology that could enlarge magic stones without limit was dangerous. But trying to reproduce nuclear weapons with black powder was not exactly realistic.

In any case, preparing ourselves to use composite magic stones would increase the number of options available to us when the time came.

Therefore, analyzing the legendary great magic circles preserved in places like the church was an urgent priority.

And so it had become necessary to scrape together the money to hire the people for that as quickly as possible.

But even after I explained that logic in detail, the expressions on the two girls’ faces did not brighten.

Because—

“But analyzing the magic circles…”

When I looked at Kururu, her lips were pursed.

“…Part of the reason is also to search for a way for you to return to the world you came from, isn’t it?”

Apparently Kengo too, when he had first arrived in this world, had sought such a method in magic circles.

After all, when a soul could take up residence in a corpse left in a mine that produced magic stones serving as catalysts for magic, then the idea that there might also be magic capable of crossing between worlds was not all that far-fetched.

Kengo and I had been talking about that one night at the mansion when Kururu, who had stayed behind alone practicing magic stone processing, ended up overhearing us.

Even I, dense as I could be, understood the meaning of Kururu’s pursed lips and the meaning of Iiria’s drooping tail as she watched the ship salvage with an air of pretending not to care.

“Even if there’s a ship, that doesn’t mean I’ll definitely board it.”

“…”

“But it would make me feel safer if there was one.”

At that, Kururu lowered her eyes, but it was Iiria who now turned her gaze back from the sea.

“That may be your peace of mind, but it’s our anxiety too.”

“That’s…”

“Because it means that if things become inconvenient for you, you can run away whenever you want.”

I was startled by how strong her words were.

But I immediately noticed the fear in the depths of Iiria’s eyes.

Because of her life experience, she would inevitably imagine herself being abandoned.

Other people’s feelings, when they became as clear as something in your hand, were like a goldfish bowl you did not know where to put.

“When I run… away…”

Unable to manage that goldfish bowl full of water, I pushed it into their hands instead.

“Then the two of you should run away together with me.”

The two slender girls tilted under the weight of what I had handed them.

“With the two of you, you’d be huge hits as idols in my world too.”

“…Idols?”

In a place where show business amounted to little more than tavern dancers and bards, trying to explain the concept of idols was no easy task.

And given how clever the two of them were, their possibilities would surely be limitless.

“For the record, in my world, there are convenient boxes that blow out cool air in summer and warm air in winter. They’re incredibly comfortable.”

When I said that teasingly, both their eyes widened.

“Kengo used to talk about things like that in the dead of winter too. He called it something like aircon.”

“There’s magic in your world too, then?”

Come to think of it, even in my old world, only a very tiny number of people could handle the magic of engineering and programming in the truest sense.

“I couldn’t use magic over there either, though.”

At that, both Iiria and Kururu let out faint snorts of laughter.

“You do plenty of things that are magical enough, don’t you think?”

“This guy’s an idiot.”

“Huh?”

Looking at my bewilderment, Iiria and Kururu burst out laughing together.

These girls who had quite openly looked sad at the thought that I might analyze the magic circles and then perhaps return to my original world.

Then Iiria turned her face toward the harbor.

“The ship is coming up.”

The bow broke the surface, and the trapped air bursting out made it look exactly like a whale blowing spray.

“It was carrying a huge amount of wheat, right?”

Perhaps because it had momentum, the ship rose so far above the surface that it looked as though it might float up completely, but before long it began to sink back down weakly. At that point, the beastfolk and cargo handlers riding small boats and hastily made rafts supported it, and once it steadied, they began towing it toward the beach.

Bringing up the ship was probably her way of saying that this embarrassing, gloomy conversation was over now.

“Yeah. And we still don’t know what’ll happen with the food situation. Once the Bax Company understands the situation, they’ll probably take advantage of us, so even if you’re not the master of the Hunt Company, it’s enough to give you a headache.”

“Hmmm… I wonder if salted wheat is still edible.”

“Depends what you mean by edible, but it sounds like it might be.”

Kururu, who had a slightly wilder streak to her, said that.

“The tricky part is that if this were truly a famine, people would quietly eat it. But right now, if they pay money, they can still buy normal, delicious food.”

And with the weight called Nodon now gone, Jirenu Territory was in the middle of an unprecedented boom.

Iiria and Kururu both looked at me and nodded reluctantly.

“If gold coins leave the island to pay for imports, then the island becomes that much poorer. It’d be nice if we could find some use for that wheat too.”

Watching the ship being towed away and the men swimming in time to their shouted rhythm, Kururu said,

“How about we try baking bread with that wheat?”

Iiria cut in from the side.

“I want to eat ordinary, delicious bread.”

That was the plain, honest reaction.

The reason the master of the Hunt Company had been in despair was probably because he knew the only ones likely to eat it were free-range pigs.

“Throwing it away would be a waste too, so let’s think about it. Besides, after this we’re meeting with Dodol-san and the others to talk about food.”

Iiria and Kururu both looked at me again in unison.

“…Why are you making those faces when the two of you ate all that leftover dragon meat this morning?”

When I said that in exasperation at the hungry looks on their faces, the two growing girls looked at each other and exchanged shrugs.