Chapter 20: A Suggestion and Core Stones

 

“You’re going back already? We’ll miss you.”

Having cured the people of Liliella-san’s hometown and made a road to the village she had once lived in, I decided to head back to Hexi.

“I can’t just stay in our care forever, and I also have to talk to the guild about the stopover town thing.”

I also have to report the subjugation of the mutant too.

“You really could’ve stayed here for longer though, you know? You’re not just my sister’s but everyone in this village’s benefactor!”

Said Elicia-san, but…

“Ooooo! To think you’re leaving already! We haven’t thanked you enough yet at all!”

Former village chief Sohn-san’s unbridled excitement made me feel a little uncomfortable.

“Please, don’t worry about it.
And anyway, I’m an adventurer, so I can’t stay in the same place forever.”

Ooh, I said something the Great Swordsman Raigard would say.

“Then I’ll go too.”

Said Liliella-san.

“Eh!? But you finally got your hometown back, and wouldn’t staying with your mother longer be better?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.
I just came here without saying a word to my companions, and all my stuff is in the inn there too.”

Oh right, cause we left there with nothing but the clothes on us to come here.

What a failure.

“And then, I still have to repay you.”

She said, her face reddening.

Was she tired?

“But your mother is finally well again, so why not stay with her for a little longer? I can tell your companions what happened, if you want?”

“Rex-san.”

Mariel-san joined our conversation.

“Rex-san, if it’s all right with you, could you please take her with you?”

“Is that all right?”

“Yes, she’s been through a lot of hardship already… so now that I’m healthy again, I want her to live for herself.”

Hmm, I do get what Mariel-san is saying, but…

“Also, since I’m well now, she’ll be able to come see me easily.
So you really don’t need to be that considerate.”

Mariel-san said, glancing at Liliella-san.

“So, just come back occasionally.
There’s no need to be so high-strung anymore.”

“O-okay…”

Liliella-san nodded apologetically.

Oh right, Elicia-san did say that Liliella-san said she wouldn’t return until she had found a way to cure Mariel-san.

So basically, it might have been quite some time since they had last seen each other when they met again.

“So, please take care of her.”

“Ah, yes!”

“He said okay, Liliella.”

Mariel-san said, giving a thumbs-up to Liliella-san.

Ah, whoops.
I accidentally agreed.

Is this what they call mum power?

Well, it’ll just be to take her back to Hexi, so it’ll be fine.

“Shall we go then.”

“Okay… ah”

““““Oooooo!!””””

I hugged Liliella-san in order to use flight magic, and cheers rose from our surroundings.

Why are they cheering?

“All right then, everyone, take care! Flight Wing!!”

“Hey, wait, this agaaaaaaain!?”

“T-they’re flyiiiiiiiing!?”

Liliella-san’s scream and the villagers’ voices mixed together.

“Araa, adventurers these days can fly, eh”

Mariel-san was as usual though.

“No! Normal adventurers can’t fly!”

“Bye, you two! Take care!”

And thus, we left for Hexi, having been seen off by Mariel-san and the villagers.

◆ ◆

Having left the village, we arrived in Hexi again.

The Sun was already sinking, and the townspeople were beginning to make their ways home.

“Phew, we’re finally back…”

Having flown there with flight magic, we landed, and Liliella-san immediately plopped down on the ground with a sigh of relief.

Did she not like flight magic?

“I’ll be going to the guild to make a report.”

“I’ll also go explain to my companions, I did just leave without a word to them, after all, so they must be worried.”

“Then, see you.”

“Yeah, see you.”

◆ ◆

Returning to the adventurers’ guild, I went over to the reception and asked after Mirisha-san.

“Oho, the rookie’s back!”

And, for some reason, the people on the guild’s tavern side cheered.

Did something happen?

“Didn’t you elope with the young miss?”

“Where is she? Don’t tell me you dumped her already?”

“What?? Where did you even get that idea from!?”

What the heck, how did they come up with something like that in just 2-3 days?

“Did we get something wrong? You and the missy suddenly disappeared, so rumours started going around that you’d eloped.”

“I did nothing of the sort!”

“Lame.”

Seriously, could you people not spread strange rumours about me.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Rex-san.
I’m happy to see you’re safe.”

While I was having that conversation, Mirisha-san had come out from the back of the guild.

“I’m sorry for being late with it, but I’m here with a part of the mutant to prove it’s been subjugated.
Also, I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Something to discuss? All right.
The mutant will be appraised over here, so we’ll talk in the reception room.”

“All right.”

I took out the mutant’s corpse from my magic bag and put it on the appraisal table.

I kept one of its blades though, since it seemed it would be able to replace my old sword.

“I’m sorry, but I’d like to keep one of the smaller blades for personal use, so may I keep that?”

I did keep a spare in the bag just in case though.

“All right.”

“Then, this way please.”

Prompted by Mirisha-san, I headed to the reception room.

◆ ◆

“So then, what did you want to discuss?”

Mirisha-san asked immediately, already in business mode.

“Well, you see…”

I recounted the situation of Liliella-san’s hometown as quickly as I could, and proposed the plan to reuse it by making it into a stopover town in the middle of the forest.

“Let’s see… it’s a very attractive proposal, but there are a few problems with it.”

“Problems?”

“Yes, we would also cooperate in making a stopover town, but dealing with monsters, specifically animal-type monsters will be difficult.”

“Animal-types?”

“Yes, we could stop Trap Plants and monsters that don’t move getting close to the village by setting a fixed line that if they cross, will have a subjugation request issued to deal with them.”

“Like with the measures to stop the forest’s expansion.”

“Yes.
And since in this case it would be limited to the size of a single village, it would be quite simple to deal with them.
But for animal-type monsters, we might be fine if there’s only a few of them, but as soon as there’s more than a certain amount of them, we won’t be able to handle them all.
And since the Forest of Magic Beasts is limited to B-Rank adventurers and above, we’d have to have B-Rank adventurers constantly be present there, maybe even live there.
And that is very much impossible right now.”

Adventurers usually never settled down anywhere.
Thus, Mirisha-san had said that having them permanently reside in one town was unimaginable.

That’s right, all the adventurers in the stories also travelled all the time.

“Then what about putting up a barrier around the town?”

“A barrier?”

“Yes, using large-scale barrier magic, we could stop monsters from entering the town.”

Mhm, putting up barrier magic around towns was pretty normal.

And like that, they wouldn’t have to worry about monsters infiltrating the stopover town.

But for some reason, Mirisha-san shook her head.

“That really is impossible.”

“Eh? Why?”

“Putting up a barrier that can cover an entire town isn’t realistic, and nobody has the mana for that either.”

She said some strange things there.
Isn’t it obvious though?

“No, I meant that you could use the formation for permanent barrier magic to protect the town? Then no-one will have to actually bother constantly casting the magic themselves.”

“Permanent barrier? What’s that?”

Huh? Mirisha-san doesn’t know of permanent barriers?

“Permanent barrier magic works by absorbing mana from its surroundings once it’s been activated to keep the magic active forever.
It’s a relatively major magic used when you need to defend cities and such.”

“That’s not just major! If it absorbs the mana from its surroundings to keep functioning, isn’t it obviously Lost Magic!?”

“What’s Lost Magic?”

“Eh!? You’re a magician but don’t know what Lost Magic is!?”

“No, I don’t.”

And I’m not a magician, I’m a sage.

“…Okay listen here.
Lost Magic is powerful magic that was used by ancient civilisations that has been lost in this current day and age.
To make a more well-known example, flight magic would fall into that category.”

I can use flight magic.

“And Lost Items are similar?”

That strange expression Aug-san had used, was that similar?

“Yes, Lost Items are items made with the technology of ancient civilisations… wait, do you have one?”

“No comment.”

I felt like the conversation would get really derailed if I answered, so I kept quiet.

They’re quite easy to make though.

“…Well, anyway.
That permanent barrier magic you spoke of is lost technology.”

“Oh.”

“…Are you, by any chance, able to use it?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Why do you know such magic!? Not even the Royal Institute of Magic can reproduce one bit of it!?”

Hee, so there’s something like a Royal Institute of Magic too, eh.

“Does it matter why I can use it.
Anyway, if the permanent barrier magic were there, would you be able to build the stopover town in the Forest of Magic Beasts?”

“…”

Mirisha-san was deep in thought.

Is there still some problem?

“I’m just asking, but how much would it cost to make one of these barriers?”

“Eh? Oh, umm, you just need to gather the materials, so as good as nothing.”

“And as a number?”

“We’d need a number of pigments and gems to write the magic formation.
And then a monster’s core stone.”

“A monster’s core stone? Are you talking about a magic stone!?”

“That’s the one.”

Monster cores were stones that formed inside monsters possessing more than a certain level of strength.

A large amount of mana was hidden in those stones, and they were thus used as catalysts for many types of magic.

Once they were outside the monster’s body, they were also called magic stones.

As a side note, that Green Dragon I had defeated a while ago probably also had one, although it was probably quite small.

It was a Dragon, after all.

“A magic stone is needed, huh…”

Huh? Mirisha-san looked dejected.

What happened?

“I’m terribly sorry, but preparing a magic stone would be really difficult.
They only appear in monsters that are quite strong.
A little while ago, a wonderful core stone belonging to a Dragon was put up for auction in the royal capital, but… well, it’s not like we would have had the budget to win the bid for it though.”

Ah.
She was worrying about that.

The monsters around here were indeed weak, so ones with core stones would be rather rare.

“It’ll be fine.
There’s probably one inside the mutant I submitted earlier.”

“Huh?”

And, with perfect timing, a receptionist burst into the room.

“Guild chief assistant! We found a magic stone in that mutant!”

I smiled at Mirisha-san, and said.

“See, there was one.”

“H-how did you know?”

Mirisha-san asked me with a stunned look on her face.

“Eh? You can’t tell normally? Like ‘ah, this one’s strong, it’ll have a core stone’”

“Of course I can’t! What kind of enemies do you fight against!?”

Ehhm, if we’re talking about my previous life, it was Black Dragons and Hazard Ligers.

“So, how about it.
Shall we make a barrier for the stopover town with the mutant’s core stone?”

“…I’ll consult with my superiors.”

A few days later, it was decided that Liliella-san’s village would be reborn as a stopover town with full support from both the country and the adventurers’ guild.

◆ ◆

My name is Mirisha.

I work as the guild chief’s assistant in the adventurers’ guild in the town of Hexi.

Having been called downstairs by one of my subordinates, I met him, Rex-san, again.

Previously, I had been the one to seek him out, but why on earth would he call for me?

Well, it’s undoubtedly something ridiculous though.

“A stopover town in the Forest of Magic Beasts!?”

See, a ridiculous proposal.

“But that isn’t realistic.”

I said.
If we could do that, we would have done so long ago.

“Barrier magic? Both personnel and mana-wise, that’s…”

Eh? Permanent magic? Neither mana nor magicians needed? What is this fantasy!?

Something like that is too good to be… look, there’s a magic stone.

I’m sorry, but magic stones are valuable and… we have one?

“Oh my goodness! There was a magic stone in the mutant!”

There really was one.

He knows Lost Magic, he knew there was a magic stone in the mutant, just who is this boy?

The only answer I had was a person who you shouldn’t antagonize.

This boy made large contributions to stopping the expansion of the Forest of Magic Beasts that had been troubling us for ages, and as if that wasn’t enough, even made roads throughout the forest.

And if we tried to use him tactlessly, he would instantly come to hate us and abandon this town for another one, or in the worst case, even run away to a different country.

With that much power, wherever he went, he would be successful.

So instead of doing something underhanded, helping him do whatever he was doing would benefit us more.

That’s also why I pushed for this stopover town proposal of his with all my power.

If it went well, the next guild master’s seat would surely belong to me!

By the way, he had a girlfriend, right?

I don’t mean it in any weird sense.
I just heard she was cute.

“By the way, if you have nothing to do after this, could we go eat…”

“Rex-san! Are you finished talking? Want to have dinner together?”

…That girl he saved after all that uproar the other day.
I see.

Promotions are good and all, but perhaps I should start seriously thinking about marriage?