The Enormous Evil That Maintains Order

About three months had passed since I was summoned to this world.

I thought things had been going reasonably well.

“Lept-sensei, I have a question. What exactly is reabsorbing expended mana? I thought mana disappeared once you used it.”

At Isha’s sudden question, I moved over beside her and answered.

Simply put, using mana through sorcery always involved some degree of loss, and since the mana that was not actually used in the spell merely dispersed, reabsorbing it was a way to reduce the amount of mana depleted from within the body.

Sorcery used mana, which was itself a collection of spiritual particles and magical essence, rather than manipulating those components directly, so losses on a finer level could never be completely avoided.

And as one became more proficient at reabsorbing mana, one would eventually become capable of absorbing not only the remnants of the internal mana one had expended, but also the external mana permeating the world, until ultimately it became possible to cast spells using external mana alone.

…Though in this world, where mana was so sparse, reaching that level would probably be extraordinarily difficult.

“Sensei, I have a question too.”

The moment I finished answering Isha’s question, another came from the opposite side—from Torii, Isha’s mother.

The two of them threw themselves into my lessons almost as though they were competing to master the sorcery I taught them, and seeing them like that made them look less like mother and daughter and more like sisters with a large age gap… No, maybe not.

Yeah, that was stretching it. Way too much.

Torii was attractive and certainly looked young for her age, but she was still unmistakably a grown woman.

There was no way she could pass for being close in age to Isha, who was only in her early teens.

“All right, Torii. What’s your question?”

I discarded the rude thought that had crossed my mind without letting it show on my face and walked over to her.

Yes, things had been going well.

Over these past three months, both Isha and Torii had learned Mana Sight and become capable of casting extremely simple sorcery.

Of course, that level was still nowhere near enough for them to protect themselves, but even so, I thought they were progressing remarkably quickly.

After all, both of them approached their studies with tremendous dedication.

At this rate, I believed they would steadily, if gradually, continue growing as sorcerers.

As for our base, I had cleared out a site surrounded by mountains that would likely be impossible for ordinary people to cross and a deep, dense forest, so unless something truly extraordinary happened, the Church’s influence would never reach this place.

In other words, we had secured our safety.

Food was also mostly covered by hunting in the forest with Bella, while anything we lacked—spices, vegetables, grains, and the like—I purchased whenever I traveled to town using Gate Magic.

This world’s culture was not very developed, so it was possible to buy things with more than just minted currency.

Specifically, I bought food and other consumables with pellets of silver or gold made by cutting up and rolling together the silver and gold coins I had earned while living with Garmon-san.

But while defense and maintaining our living conditions were going smoothly, offense and intelligence gathering, on the other hand, were proving difficult.

This world’s culture was not very developed. In other words, information traveled slowly.

I could not even get my hands on a proper map.

Every time I reached a settlement, I had to ask where the next one was, then travel there on foot while gradually expanding my own map.

And an even bigger problem was the sheer size of the Church’s sphere of influence.

The Church that had become our enemy was not merely the religion of a single country, but an enormous organization wielding tremendous power across multiple nations.

Suppose, for example, that I heard a rumor in some town tavern that a priest dispatched to a certain region had begun hunting heretics.

Because information traveled so slowly, however, by the time that rumor reached my ears, the heretic hunts in that region would already be almost over, making it far too late to intervene.

Until I completed my map and established a travel network using Gate Magic, I probably would not be able to respond in time.

That fact weighed somewhat heavily on me.

Once the map was finished and I had established a Gate Magic travel network, I already had an idea for drastically undermining the Church’s authority.

But I still could not decide whether I should actually do it.

By my own standards, and in terms of fulfilling my contract as well, the Church was nothing but a harmful presence.

The reason this world’s culture remained so underdeveloped was also because the Church declared every new discovery or idea heretical as soon as it appeared.

Medicine, transportation, and all sorts of other fields were being held back by the Church’s existence.

On top of that, the Church’s upper ranks lined their pockets through estates worked by slaves, while those below them devoted themselves to hunting heretics in order to score points and climb into those upper ranks.

…They were unquestionably harmful.

More than anything, the fact that they had targeted Isha and Torii alone was reason enough for me to eliminate them.

But if I destroyed the Church’s authority, wars would probably break out over the rights and privileges the Church had once controlled.

Every nation was dissatisfied with the current situation, where the Church kept them under its thumb, and apparently there were also powers in distant lands that followed entirely different religions.

Even if the current order was distorted, was it really right for me to destroy something that was at least maintaining a certain degree of stability?

There was every possibility that Isha and Torii could get caught up in the wars that followed…

I had been thinking about it constantly, but I still had no answer.

I was perfectly aware that this was an arrogant concern, the sort of thing that would make someone ask just who I thought I was, looking down on human society from above.

But although I was no god, I was still a genuine devil.

I thought it was only natural that I would end up viewing things from above.

Because seriously, the Church in this world was beyond saving.

For now, however, all I could do was finish my map as quickly as possible.

After breakfast, I gave Isha and Torii a short lesson, assigned them the training exercises they were to complete that afternoon, and then went hunting with Bella.

Once we had caught our prey and eaten lunch, I used Gate Magic to travel to a settlement in the afternoon, then set out on foot toward the next one.

After expanding my map as far as I could, I returned to the base, ate dinner, checked the results of Isha and Torii’s training, and gave them another short sorcery lesson.

That was how I spent my days.

I was certainly busy, but Bella handled security around the base while Isha and Torii took care of cooking and the other household chores, allowing me to focus entirely on my own responsibilities.

To be honest, I sometimes missed my old life, when I had spent my days doing the cooking and housework myself, but my current life was not bad either.

I still felt impatient, but little by little, we were moving forward—and doing so steadily.