I'd requested reinforcements and an unwanted pest had tagged along, but even so, General Owen had duties to attend to and Rille-nee was busy, so they couldn't meet all the time.
The General reluctantly returned to town after their reunion.
Since he needed to command the troops, his lodgings would be at the feudal lord's estate, so he rarely had the chance to see Rille-nee while she was stationed at Kikus Village.
As for me, I was based in Kikus Village, where I'm keeping a close eye on the patients day by day. So even if that guy got any funny ideas, I could deal with it.
Regarding the order for me to return to the capital, I talked the General into letting me stay a while longer by insisting I still had things to do.
Of course, the General wasn't the only one who came as reinforcements. Several officials had also been dispatched from the palace and were handling administrative duties.
Those people were connected to me more.
The freshly reassigned and surely exhausted officials summoned me and demanded that I submit reports covering all the magic stones I'd used without permission up to now, as well as the ones I planned to use going forward.
Apparently, the palace had approved the use of magic stones as an emergency measure to combat arsenic poisoning.
So when I drafted my new report, I slipped in a request to use magic stones for unrelated things like lamps and farming equipment... only to have it rejected right away.
I pushed for installing fireless lamps in the mine tunnels, but they refused. "Don't waste precious resources," they said. Even though this is also a matter of lives.
"Dealing with people who don't understand is such a hassle, huh."
Lux-san offered that remark after hearing my story.
After finishing our job for the day, we'd borrowed a shed used for farm work in the village and were carving magic circles.
We did this at the corner of the infirmary at first, but between hauling in magic stones, scattering blueprints everywhere and keeping the lights on until late at night, we'd gotten in the way of everyone there, so we moved.
Being alone in a closed room with a man in the middle of the night probably wasn't the best look, but honestly, I didn't feel like anything was going to happen. And in fact, nothing had.
We were sitting cross-legged on the floor with our backs to each other, working on our own tasks.
I was racking my brains trying to figure out if I could somehow make a lamp out of the worthless scrap stones I was lining up in front of me. Meanwhile, Lux-san was carving the magic circle I'd designed for dealing with arsenic into green magic stones.
"The magic circles for separating arsenic could be split across multiple stones, so even scrap stones could handle them with the workload divided up. But a spell that just produces light only needs one simple magic circle, so you can't split it... which actually makes it harder."
"Yes. And there's no point if it lights up for a split second and goes out. It needs to last."
"Right, in the end it all comes down to how much mana the stone holds."
"Well, it's worth a shot even if it doesn't work out."
I said it casually, already in the middle of carving away at a magic circle.
"By the way, Lux-san."
I continued the conversation without stopping my hands. There was something about him that had been bugging me for a while.
"Where did you study?"
No matter how I thought about it, Lux-san's level of knowledge, especially when it came to science, was far too advanced compared to this world's standards.
He understood atoms and ions with ease, and fixed the magic circle I had created for the arsenic after just one explanation, and then there's the prosthetic eye.
Even if his knowledge of magic came from his master, where on earth did his scientific knowledge come from?
"Where, you ask... hmm, where was it? On the road, maybe?"
That wasn't quite the answer I was looking for.
"Did you attend school, or learn from an amazing teacher?"
"Nope."
"Then you're self-taught?"
"I guess so. I did lots of experiments. There was just so much I didn't know no matter who I asked or what books I read. So I formed hypotheses, ran experiments and searched for explanations I could accept."
So... he acquired almost all of his knowledge on his own?
"Those atoms you told me about... I actually learned of them by seeing them with my own eyes."
"...Excuse me?"
"I wanted to know what the so-called spirits, who are supposedly the root of all things, actually were. I figured they had to be something extremely small, so I made a magic tool that could see things in fine detail. That's why, when I heard your explanation, I immediately knew that you were talking about spirits."
Wait, wait, wait. How did he see them? Did he build an atomic force microscope or something?
If this isn't a lie, then this person is just...
"Are you done with your questions?"
"Ah, yes."
"Then would you mind hearing me out for a bit?"
With that preamble, Lux-san brought up a topic that was incredibly complex.
"Spirits turned out to be the building blocks of matter. So then, what is the God who commands them?"
"The true nature of God?"
"Many people say he exists, but no one knows what he's like. Only vague descriptions of him get passed around. They say God is in the heavens, but what exactly is heaven? It's not the sky. There's nothing up there."
"Hmm, well, there's the problem of having to define God first... If we're talking about an existence beyond our perception, then proving it would be difficult too. For example, if he existed in another dimension."
"Dimension?"
This felt under theoretical physics. It's not my area of expertise, but I can tell him information that can serve as reference.
"A dimension is a unit of physical measurement. It represents the extent of space. We can freely move through width, depth and height, and we can perceive them visually. We can also perceive the flow of time, though we can't move freely through it. Beings in a higher dimension would have freedom of movement even through time."
For example, if you walked to the right from where you stood you'd reach the past, and if you walked to the left you'd reach the future. A world where time could be treated as a physical thing.
"Beings in a higher dimension can't be perceived by us. To put it simply, imagine that the limits of what we can perceive are the insides of this shed. If God exists outside the shed, then we have no way of seeing him."
"...I see, I think I get it. You're saying God might be something with far greater degrees of freedom than us, something capable of moving beyond the space we can perceive? Like transcending time itself. And we can't perceive God because he's in a place we can't reach."
He really got it. Maybe Lux-san had already arrived at this idea on his own.
"Then what are magic stones?"
I turned around at that question. Lux-san was holding a stone up to the orb of magical light he'd created, which floated near the ceiling.
"We can physically handle them. If God is an existence beyond our perception, then the fragments of his power... these magic stones... should be the same."
"That's..."
It certainly did seem more natural that way. While I struggled for an answer, Lux-san continued.
"Were magic stones not created by God, or... are magic stones themselves God?"
"What?"
I instinctively looked down at the stone in my hands.
"I've always wondered why people don't consider the stones God itself when they say it was given by God. They believe God is in the heavens, yet never explain the contradiction that magic stones come from deep underground. If magic stones are God and God is merely a force without individual will, then wouldn't mages who wield that force be God? And if so..."
He lowered his raised arm and murmured.
"Did God create the magic stones, or did the magic stones create God?"
...Well, this had gotten incredibly complicated.
I wouldn't say I couldn't follow it, but it was a bit hard to accept outright.
"If God is merely a force without will, then what about the voices we hear from magic stones? And I still have questions about how the Mitoan people learned magic in the first place. Well, I highly doubt they were taught by God."
And as someone who had been reborn from another world, it just didn't sit right with me.
Saying God has no will is close to saying God doesn't exist. And if that were the case, was my reincarnation just a coincidence?
When I laid out my counterarguments, or rather, my doubts, Lux-san readily agreed.
"Yeah, my theory has plenty of contradictions too. The invisible God you're talking about might actually exist after all."
"I can't help but sense something deliberate behind it all. It's also strange that magic only responds to the Mitoan language. It feels like someone's will."
"Oh, I've thought about that too. Maybe it's the other way around."
"The other way around?"
"What if the magic stones didn't respond to the Mitoan language... but the Mitoan people learned the language of the magic stones?"
"...Oh."
"Of course, even if that were the case, it would be hard to explain without the stones having some kind of self-awareness. Maybe the story that God taught them might actually be true."
While I was still taken aback, Lux-san asked me something.
"Aime, can you hear the voices?"
"...Voices from the magic stones?"
"Yes. But not the opening spells or anything like that. Something that echoes deep in your ears sometimes, so loud it's almost annoying."
"Isn't that just tinnitus?"
"Tinnitus? Maybe it is..."
Lux-san suddenly fell deep into thought. What's with him? What an odd person.
So, what were we even talking about again? The conversation started getting all over the place. Maybe because it was the middle of the night and we were working at the same time.
Meanwhile, I was just about finished carving my magic circle.
"Well, I don't think the answer to God's existence will come easily."
I offered that rather unsatisfying conclusion. But I couldn't help it. There aren't enough facts to back up my explanation.
"Yeah, that's fine. I don't need an answer right now. I just wanted to talk with you."
Lux-san's voice was a touch higher, and full of energy.
"You know things I don't, and you understand everything I say. Talking and listening to you is fun. This is the first time I've ever enjoyed talking to someone so much."
The first time...? He must have felt quite lonely.
Was it because he was traveling alone or was he just too smart for anyone else to keep up with? There aren't many mages to begin with so he probably hasn't met anyone he could talk to about magic. Did he not have any friends?
"Your ideas are really educational, Lux-san, so I enjoy our conversations too. The way you think always catches me off guard."
"Really? But the same goes for you. Thanks to you, I feel like I've just woken up."
Lux-san shifted around to face me and peeked at what I was working on.
I arranged six scrap stones carved with magic circles on the paper spread across the floor; one in the centre and five surrounding it.
Each of the five outer stones had a circuit inscribed on it that connected to the magic circle in the middle and the centre of every magic circle was left blank.
Once I finished checking everything, I chanted the opening spell on all the stones.
The carved grooves glowed. The five outer stones instantly darkened and lost their lustre, and then...
The central stone shifted from a dark red to orange.
"...I did it."
It was just a shot in the dark. I hadn't actually expected it to work.
A magic circle that transfers mana from one stone to another.
Lux-san had taught me how to link magic circles together, so I knew that circles carved on separate stones could work in tandem which meant that connecting the stones would allow them to share their mana.
So I wondered if instead of converting the mana into another form of energy, I could direct the flow in one direction and move all of it into a single stone rather than sharing it.
"I did it!"
I thrust the orange stone right up to Lux-san's nose. I couldn't contain my excitement.
"See? You're quite surprising yourself."
Lux-san took the stone from me with a smile.
Even scrap stones could be made useful if you gathered enough of them...
I could scrape off the transfer magic circles later and carve in whatever spell I want, even one that lit up a place. No one can complain if I make them from stones I'd picked up from the discarded pile, right?!
This might just be enough to convince the higher-ups!
I need to report to Master right away.
Finally... finally, our wish, the landlady's small wish, is going to come true!!!