I heard voices in my ears.
Someone was constantly talking to me. I’m tired and sleeping but it’s too noisy.
I opened my eyes and a strange green colour leaped into my field of vision.
“You’re awake?”
The face that was staring at me was familiar. Hmm, who is this again? I closed my eyes and thought.
“You’re sleeping again even though it’s almost noon? How long do you think it’ll take for your head to recover? I’m getting tired of waiting. I hope you’ll wake up soon”
I’m still tired… but it’s difficult to sleep when someone is endlessly talking to themselves. Why is he by my bedside anyway?
The rest that I finally was able to have after staying up all night ends here. I sighed loudly.
“… Good morning, Lux-san.”
His face lit up with joy when I said this.
“Mornin’ Aime! I’ve been waiting for you!”
How old is he? He’s really excited. He’s probably older than Rille-nee.
The mysterious man had long greenish-white hair and red eyes which was rare for someone from Traus.
It was a coincidence that this unknown man was in this village. Apparently, he was also the mage technician who had given Giedt his magic eyes.
“Now, tell me more about this arsenic thing.”
Lux-san couldn’t wait to learn more about arsenic.
The conversation that we had at dawn made me reach my limits, so it ended half-way through. I wanted to talk to him as well, but I wanted to change first and check the situation.
“Please wait a little longer.”
“Huh? I have to wait again?”
Lux-san’s mouth twitched in dissatisfaction. You’re an adult! Just be patient for a little longer!
“Aime? You’re up?”
Rille-nee peeked out from behind the partitioning screen as I was putting on my robe, and bowed slightly towards Lux-san.
Rille-nee and the other medical staff already knew about him since he was already in the village when we arrived and had been holed up in a room.
He wasn’t sick, so they were protecting him in the rest area to prevent him from contracting the plague. The villagers said ‘he had wandered into the village’.
“Morning, Rille-nee.”
“Mornin’. How are you feeling? Does it hurt anywhere?”
“Nope.”
Rille-nee sat next to me, checked the places that she had bandaged before I felt asleep and rewrapped the loose bandages. I’m not that injured!
“There’s some bread on the table for you to eat. I’ll serve you some soup too. The soup is made from the water you magically summoned for us, so you can drink it.”
“Oh, thanks. I’m sorry to bother you even though you’re so busy.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Rille-nee laughed then went towards the stove.
I walked out from behind the partitioning screen. The medical team was busy working, and Giedt was sitting on a chair at the table, eating some bread.
He was also given a break while I was resting. He had his armour off.
“Mornin’.”
“Hey.”
Giedt threw me a piece of bread from the basket on the table.
I caught it with one hand and sat in the chair in front of him. Lux-san, who had followed me like a baby chick, sat down next to me.
“How are you feeling?”
“It doesn’t feel good to wake up to your eyes being gouged out.”
“What?”
Giedt looked at Lux-san wearily. Both his eyes were still in his eye socket though.
“I was bored since I had to wait until Aime woke up.”
“Can you stop sticking your fingers into people’s eyes to kill time?”
Giedt slammed his fist on the table. The bread in the basket jumped at the impact.
But Lux-san looked as if he couldn’t understand why Giedt was angry.
“I tried to sneak a peek since I didn’t want to wake you up. Does it feel gross to have a finger stuck in your eye?”
“It’s gross and scary.”
“I see, sorry. But I remember you now. The magic circle engraved in your eye was definitely made by me. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.”
“… Hmm.”
Giedt didn’t have anything else to say to the smiling Lux-san, and could only let out a deep sigh.
Actually, Lux-san didn’t remember Giedt at all.
He gave Giedt the eye seven or eight years ago, and Giedt had grown and changed much since then so it was understandable for him not to be able to remember Giedt, but Giedt recognised his benefactor immediately.
He had previously described the man who had given him the prosthetic eye as ‘having a different hair colour’, but he meant it in a specific way. Lux-san definitely had distinctive eye and hair colours.
Giedt was surprised and froze up when Lux-san suddenly appeared when I was talking to the villagers but it wasn’t an emotional reunion.
The first words Lux-san said to Giedt were, “You have unusual eyes.” It was as if he had forgotten all about giving some kid a prosthetic eye. I don’t like people who act as if they did someone a favour, but I also don’t know how to feel about this reaction too.
The excellent mage technician was a little, I mean, really eccentric.
“The soldier who went to inform the town has just returned.”
Giedt had given up speaking to Lux-san and spoke to me instead. I nervously urged him to continue while drinking the soup that Rille-nee had made for me.
“How’d it go?”
“I heard he made contact with the platoon commander without a hitch.”
I was relieved to hear that. That’s good.
“He said to leave the feudal lord to him. We’re not going to take our action until he has talked with the feudal lord.”
“I see. Then we’ll continue working on a cleansing method until we can take action.”
I drank the rest of my soup and finally turned to Lux-san.
“Should I explain the toxicity of arsenic to you?”
“No, I want to hear what arsenic is. If it’s the same thing as I’m thinking about then I might be able to deal with it with magic.”
What is arsenic? That’s a bit hard to explain.
“Arsenic is a type of ‘atom’. An atom is the smallest unit that makes up matter and its easier to understand if you imagine it as a small grain…”
I gave him a detailed explanation about what arsenic was, including the basics, just as he wanted.
I have no idea if he could get rid of arsenic just by listening to this though.
But he knows more about magic than me and from what I can gather from Giedt’s prosthetic eye, this man was knowledgeable in a lot of things. I was confident that my explanation wouldn’t be in vain.
A glimmer of understanding soon appeared in Lux-san’s eyes as he listened intently.
“――― That atom, you mean yuwena?”
“Excuse me?”
“A spirit. The root of all things, the servant of God.”
I remembered what I had learnt in school.
The Mitoan people believe that the earth is ruled by spirits. The spirits reflect the will of God and control all living and non-living things.
In conclusion, Lux-san was saying that the real identity of these fantastic things are atoms?
“Look.”
Lux-san took out an old piece of paper from his pocket and spread it on the table.
On the piece of paper were a lot of words neatly written in boxes. There were over hundreds or thousands of letters on there.
I couldn’t read most of them but the letters looked like the writing system that the Mitoan people used.
“All these letters here represent spirits. I think there’s a letter among them that represents arsenic.”
“Did the Mitoan people have a concept of atoms?”
Surprise came out from my mouth.
What these foreign people had vaguely interpreted as spirits was in fact science? Could this piece of paper be the periodic table? The one that always appears on the first page of chemistry textbooks? If so, then there’s more on here than the ones I know of…
“Arsenic is poisonous because it dissolves in water, right? I think we can use magic to work directly on the atoms and turn it into something we can hold in our hands. What do you think?”
“That’s possible?”
It really is magical ――― to be able to specifically target and remove one atom from a mixture of atoms which are bounded together.
“Probably. For example, with magic circles that roughly look like this…”
Lux-san took out a blank piece of paper and a pen and began drawing magic circles. I stood up and looked at them.
“How about something that looks like this?”
“I, see… I see… but arsenic can dissolve into various forms. Not all of them are harmful, but if we want to get rid of all the arsenic just in case then this…”
“Really? You really know your stuff.”
Lux-san squinted both his eyes happily.
“I can’t believe that there’s someone like you in Traus. Have the people of Traus progressed this far without me knowing?”
I was so engrossed in the discussion and his words brought me back to my senses.
“Ah, no. This is something I studied from a faraway land.”
I felt that I would lose all my persuasiveness if I started talking about my previous life, so I lied.
“Really? From what nation?”
“It’s far, far across the sea. I don’t know what it’s called.”
I’ll just spin it like this.
And it wasn’t like I had forgotten about this, but him being able to easily understand my explanation which belonged to a world with far more advance science made me once again wonder what his identity was.
“Where were you born, Lux-san?”
I thought that I might be looking down on him and that there was somewhere in this world that has made advancements in science, but he answered, “Traus.”
“What?”
“But I’m not from Traus.”
“More importantly,” Lux-san continued. He gave me no time to ask him more questions.
“Let’s identify what letter represents arsenic and quickly make some magic circles. Can you tell me its characteristics?”
There definitely wasn’t any time for idle chatter.
I pushed all my questions and speculations aside again and focused back on the task at hand.
“Arsenic exists as an anion in water and is similar to phosphorus with an atomic weight of…”
“Yup, yup, and?”
Our discussion got heated again. Next to us…
“… I don’t understand.”
“They’re alike.”
Giedt blurted while Rille-nee seemed to be laughing.
“――― It’s done!”
After drawing up lots of magic circles, we finally finished what we believed to be the correct one. I held up the paper and yelled.
It wasn’t just one magic circle. The diagram that was drawn was complex and worked by interlocking several magic circles.
We discuss various things, and drew and revised the diagrams over and over again. There was paper scattered all over and under the table and we were by ourselves in the room.
It looked a bit darker too.
“Now we need to experiment with this!”
Lux-san was also excited. His long hair was dishevelled and he was slightly sweating.
We wanted to experiment and see if this diagram can really separate arsenic but there was a problem.
I hadn’t received any information about how the talk with the feudal lord is going.
“Aime, do you only have one magic stone?”
“Correct. What about you Lux-san?”
“I don’t have any. I came here because I wanted some magic stones.”
Lux-san’s shoulders dropped.
“I ran out of magic stones while I was travelling, so I thought I’d get some from the El Alley mines. But I ran across a sick man and checked him out of curiosity and got stuck in this village.”
Apparently, he had entered this village out of curiosity.
I have a feeling he’s someone who drifts around following his interests instead of following his conscience.
“Hmm, hold on. You can’t buy or sell individual magic stones though.”
“There are people who would if you have enough money.”
“… I see.”
I’ve heard something that could be considered a light crime. I don’t want to hear more about this since it’ll be a pain in the ass.
Well, the problem in front of me takes precedence. Speaking of which, my pockets have been jingling for a while now.
“I have ones like this though.”
I took out a scrap magic stone which had very little magic left inside that I had picked up from the mine a while ago. I had forgotten that I had put these into my pocket.
Some of them seemed to be missing because of all the moving around I did but there were still about five which were smaller than the palm of my hand left in my pockets.
Lux-san picked up the stone which was placed on the table and frowned.
“It’s big enough that I can carve the diagram onto it if I try hard enough but it doesn’t have enough mana. I don’t think it’ll activate.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I had already expected him to say this.
I don’t know how far the discussion with the feudal lord has progressed but we should be able to get magic stones from the mines in a little while.
There is no need to experiment now… but I do have a question.
“You can interlock separate magic circles but you can’t interlock separate magic stones?”
“What?”
I tried to explain to the blank Lux-san about what I had suddenly came up with.
“For example, we can carve separate magic circles onto this stone and this stone, and then activate them at the same time and make them interact with each other. That way, the mana that a single magic stone holds would be enough to activate one magic circle.”
I think it’s a very simple idea. If the magic stones don’t have enough mana, then why don’t we let them share the burden?
“… Hmm, that might be possible. Let’s try it!”
Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Using the tools that Lux-san had, we carved a slightly modified design onto the five magic stones.
The circuit, which should be closed on one magic stone, was opened so that it connected the circuit at specific positions.
I filled a tub with the contaminated well water, placed it on the table and surrounded it with the magic stones, then I cast each of the opening spells and activated the magic circles.
“Woah…”
Silver particles immediately appeared in the water.
They slowly sunk to the bottom of the tub like fluttering snowflakes.
It was a beautiful phenomenon but it ended as soon as the mana in the magic stones ran out.
I picked out the silver grains that had remained at the bottom of the tub with tweezers.
If left alone, the arsenic crystals would become increasingly oxidised and blackened, but otherwise they would have the colour of a mirror.
Lux-san cheered.
“We really did it!”
“Let me check!”
I went outside and tried to heat the crystal with fire magic before I rejoiced. A dark lilac glow appeared for a moment after I heated it for a while.
This was how arsenic reacted when heated. Yes!
“It’s perfect!”
“Yay!”
Lux-san and I clasped our hands together as we exploded with joy.
Our sense of accomplishment was overwhelming.
Magic is amazing! We can do this without any reagents! This power isn’t just for causing destruction!
“Thank you so much, Lux-san. This is all thanks to you!”
“No, this was only possible because you explained everything to me!”
“… Hey.”
Someone called out to us, who looked suspicious dancing in joy in the dark, in a reserved voice.
I turned around to see Giedt. He was in full work-mode with his armour on and sword at his hip. Well, it’s already evening, so I guess he’s finished with his break.
“Giedt, we’ve finished with the magic circle! We can save everyone!”
“Yeah?”
I approached him excitedly and he took two steps back.
“Have you still not heard from Gwen-san?! We can purify the water from the well straight away if we have magic stones! As for the river… it would be better to build a water reservoir somewhere, so I need to someone about this. There are many things I want to go as soon as possible!”
“Hey, calm down! Look around more will you.”
Around?
Lux-san and I knitted our eyebrows but we turned and looked around like we were told.
Soldiers were busily moving around the village, and the medical team was carrying sick people from house to house.
Everyone seems to be rushing.
“What’s going on?”
“The feudal lord’s soldiers have us surrounded. They’re probably going to kill us all.”
Whattt??! The feudal lord is being quite reckless.