CH 20

Chapter 20: Magic

「I messed up…」

I held my hands to my head in desperation.

We are currently experiencing an extremely serious problem.

The food for the livestock is gone.

As for how this happened, the reason is simple.

I didn’t know that horses ate that much.

It’s clear that the these horses ate four times more than the cows did.

Why?! Aren’t their bodies about the same size?!!

Is it just pure bad luck and these specific horses all eat a lot?

「No, horses naturally tend to eat several times more food than cows.」

Ria hesitantly said.

So in short, it was my fault for not properly investigating beforehand.

Well, now, what should we do?

「Shall we cull them?」

Tetra asked while gripping the hilt of the iron sword she uses for self-defense.

「Culling, huh… That feels like a waste…」

I don’t want to kill them since they were so expensive.

Isn’t there any way we can keep them?

「Um… I’m pretty sure that the outskirts of King Ferim’s (フェリム) country were covered in plains. Can’t we just take them there? I think that since the horses are faster than cows, it would be quite easy to make the trip there and back in a day…」

Yeaah, but about that… well, there’s no other choice…

For somewhere with plenty of grass that the livestock can graze upon, I guess thatcountry is about the only place that fits the bill.

Which would mean that we would have to commit a form of infringement in letting our horses graze in a territory that we don’t have the rights to.

I don’t really want to have to deal with him. With King Ferim.

I haven’t really heard that many good things about him.

Like how the king originally ascended the throne through a revolution, or how all those who opposed him are completely purged of their position, et cetera et cetera.

Well as a leader I guess it’s the obvious course of action, but… the idea’s still scary.

But now of all times. I’ve already gone through negotiating with King Rosaith.

Since I’ve on occasion gone to discuss and negotiate things with the neighbouring villages, by now the existence of this village should be fairly well known.

It’s only a matter of time until they take some form of action concerning us…

It should be fine as long as we aren’t found out.

「Then let’s do that. And since Ria will obviously be coming as well…」

「Nii-san! I, I’ll go too! It would be a problem if they ran away, and it would also be terrible if you were attacked by a wolf!」

Roswald raised his hand.

It’s good that he’s fired up about it, but you need to run away immediately if you see a wolf, okay? Since there’s no way you can win.

Well, we’ve got a solution now. I guess?

In the middle of the night, I woke up.

「The full moon is beautiful as always」

A huge moon shone in the sky.

Although people say that for a satellite Earth’s moon is huge, this world’s moon looks several times larger.

Is it just closer than our moon, or is its size actually that much bigger?

Probably thanks to that, this world’s nights are pretty bright.

Of course, it doesn’t compare to the light of Japan’s urban areas at night, but it’s certainly lighter than night in the middle of the countryside.

Yuria said she would come here on the night of the full moon.

I should wake everyone up before she arrives.

Although most of the senior members have at least learned anti-curse techniques, the newer children still haven’t learned them.

Also, some members like Soyon, Tetra, and Lulu are very talented and still have plenty of room for improvement, so I can’t let them skip the lessons.

「For now, I guess I’ll wash my face」

Out of all the children, Tetra is the worst at waking up.

Waking her up takes a ton of effort.

But if I put it off she will sulk so I have to wake her first before the others.

Since it will be a rather difficult battle, I won’t be able to win for as long as I can’t keep my eyes open.

Torch in hand, I head towards the creek inside the village.

We of course use it to wash ourselves, but we also use it in our irrigation channels, for cooking, and for drinking.

However as it is hard water, you can hardly call it tasty.

「Ah…」

There was someone already there.

The image of their snow white back burned into my eyes.

They turned around to face me, did they sense my presence?

It was Tetra.

Our eyes met.

After a few seconds, Tetra blushed furiously and squatted down.

Because of the shallowness of the creek, her body wasn’t hidden at all.

「…Did you see?」

「I only saw your back」

「That’s the problem. You really didn’t see?」

Are you really so against me seeing your back? I don’t really understand.

「I didn’t see anything strange at the least」

「Okay」

Seeming convinced, she wore a look of relief and wrapped a cloth around her body as she got up.

「Grab those clothes over there for me.」

「Eh!? Ah, gotcha」

I pick up the clothes by my feet and hand them to her.

Looking at her like this, she can certainly be called beautiful.

Although farmwork is inevitably a job that will sunburn you and will be harsh on the skin, her skin is very beautiful.

Although it’s a stretch to call her chest big, even by flattery, for a thirteen-or-so-year-old it’s more than big enough.

We can certainly expect growth there in the future.

「Actually, I’ve made something amazing, so can you spare some time for me to show it off to you?」

「Although I don’t really mind… just what did you make?」

I asked, to which Tetra laughed mischievously.

「That’s a surprise for later」

“Hey, Julia. Do you know what Tetra has made?”

“ahaha. well, yeah. I think you’ll be surprised”

Julia laughed happily.

I looked towards Tetra. The other member’s looked towards her too.

“This is what I wanted to show you”

Tetra spread a paper before our eyes.

On the paper are some geometric patterns drawn using red ink.

what is this?

“The red ink is from my blood”

“oy, are you alright?”

“Yeah. yeah, Just as you told me to I properly washed it in water and soaked it in alcohol.”

Tetra said while showing her thumb wrapped in cloth.

Although I taught you how to disinfect wounds I don’t know what could happen so I don’t want you to do something so dangerous.

“Now, please pay attention.”

Saying that, Tetra neatly spread the paper on the ground, and placed her hand on the center.

“Shine”

Tetra muttered and the geometric patterns began to faintly glow.

What on earth…..

“Almis, try it”

“Eh?! Me? I don’t have such a talent you know”

Unfortunately my magic ability is normal, I can only cast magic resistance.

There are only a few girls who can do magic other than just curse resist.

Right now, in our village there are only ten magicians that can cast just curse resist. And those who have very high magical ability include only Tetra, Soyon, and Lulu.

“It’s fine, go ahead”

Tetra pushed my back.

It can’t be helped. I guess I’ll try.

I placed my hand in the center and muttered the same thing Tetra did.

And as I did so, the geometric pattern began to glow!

“What’s the meaning of this?”

“As you know, there are different levels of magical talent. There are two reasons. First is because of the strength of the soul……Each individual has a different strength in their soul. Typically Women have stronger soul power than men, and even among women there are large variances. Magic can only be found in a small handful of women. do you understand so far?”

“Yeah’

As I nodded, Tetra began explaining again.

“The trouble of low magical power can easily be solved. We can just pour magical power from the outside. If we sacrifice the blood of a magician, it compensates with a curse stone.”

A curse stone is a stone filled with magical power.

They are gathered from the ground.

There are theories that they result from the hatred and malice of humans coagulate underground, or that they come from the bodies of fallen angels, angels, or fairies.

The truth is unknown.

“Second is that the technique of constructing(Magic?) is very advanced. This second part is the most important rule”

Great magicians can be born so that even if no one tells them how to do magic they are able to do simple magic.

hence it is very difficult to teach magic since it’s something that wasn’t taught in the first place.

the ability to breath isn’t really something that can be taught but rather something you are born with.

It’s that sort of thing.

Then, how does one get taught?.

There is a way to speak to one’s soul.

Powerful magicians are able to interact with souls.

When this technique is exercised on someone, they feel a sort of tugging on their souls.

If you don’t manage to do this technique within ten tries, it may seem that you have no talent, and it would be best to give up.

“The construction of magic can be supported to some extent by doing things like singing and dancing.”

Magic it seems, if you just try to do it in your head then you are able to do it.

Though, to cast magic with just thinking requires concentration as strong as steel.

That’s why things like magical encatations were devised to reduce the burden.

But in the end dancing and singing are needed depending on the talent. That’s why I haven’t come to a solution.

Julia has several times the magical power as a normal person, has steel-solid concentration, perfect singing pitch, and is skilled in moving her body.

“This is something that shows a magical glow using the pattern. Magical power is supplied with my blood. It takes roughly ten seconds”

“…in other words its that. The magical technique is represented… by the geometric pattern?”

“exactly. you can just draw the pattern on paper and carry it around. and since the technique is already completed it just needs to be triggered”

So in other words, having a bunch of magicians singing and dancing is unecessary. That’s a magic that was not able to be theorized before.

while singing and dancing, magic is likely to succeed. After all they are going to such an extent.

In the end the success or failure is based on the compitence of the shamans.

This girl just overturned all of that.

“How on earth did you figure this out?”

“I experimented little by little. finally, I tried this. I found that writing this geometric pattern works.”

Tetra handed five sheets of paper to me.

They were chock full of formulas written on them.

“This is the foundation of all of my work”

Where are you from, you greecian? (Fraiziar: Idk, he suddenly mentioned greece, maybe a typo and meant karishian? still doesn’t make sense., original: 　お前はどこのギリシャ人だ)

“I decided to call this a Ritual Formula”

It’s an equation that represents a ritual, thats why Ritual Equation huh. It’s like that.

“Hey, wouldn’t this make the traditional magician useless?”

If that’s the case, Julia’s amazingness will become less amazing. Then she would just be a member of the royal family….. no that’s plenty to make her important.

“That’s not true. There are some things that cannot be expressed in formulas”

“Exactly. Since there are things in this world that cannot be represented using numbers like PI and Square roots. While forces of nature like fire or wind can be reproduced easily, curses that rely on emotions are impossible.

Thank goodness.

I was worred that the concept of irrational things like square roots wasn’t used at all.

“In other words if you combine normal rituals with the ritual equations, it will be the strongest right!!”

Lulu said, raising the tension.

“By the way, everyone was silent until a while ago, was everyone able to understand?”

Tetra turned around to face Ron and the others who just stood in silence.

“I only really understand that it’s something amazing.”

“Well I guess if you understand that much it’s enough”

There were also some formula written that I couldn’t understand.

Since I can’t use magical rituals.

“But you know, I feel a bit uncomfortable pushing together magics that can and cannot be expressed when drawing those shapes. I mean, they’re different things right?”

I see. There is truth there.

It’d be better if there was some sort of distinction between the two.

“Then, lets let Almis decide.”

“Am I ok? Then how about calling it Sorcery?”

Doing things like flinging fire or blowing wind, the type of magic that appears in RPGs.

Though I want to call it all magic, I feel it’s better to call one magic and the other sorcery,

“I’m anxious over the “Ma” part though” (TL: ma = 魔 = demon, part of the word 魔術 that I translate as sorcery)

“Magic is curses right?”

Either way the dangerous part of the name stays.

“I guess that’s right huh”

“then from today onwards its sorcery. I am the worlds oldest sorcery huh….. yeah, That sounds cool. shall we make my second name is now 『Founder』?”

Tetra muttered while grinning

She’s around that age huh…..

I’m worried. (TL: is tetra a chuunibyou?? I hope not.)

After this event with Tetra, we created a prototype of what will one day be called magic tools.

In every textbook of ancient history Almis’ name is written down.

Furthermore, the names 『Worlds oldest Magician』 and 『Founder』 were passed down for thousands of years. Throughout the world.

you did it, Tetra!

(TL: If you had trouble understanding I don’t blame you, I am confused to. I believe that after this chapter you should understand that sorcery(魔術) is magic that cannot be written on ritual equations, while magic(呪術）is things like curses and the like which can be written. I think that’s what they were saying.)