Dreams, Hope, and the Child Who Wouldn't Wake
What was going on? Out of nowhere she wanted me to learn magic? Baby Mom's offer had come completely out of left field, and I wasn't the least bit inclined to take her up on it.
Right. We didn't.
In the world of Dragon Brave, magic was combat magic, almost without exception. It wasn't simply because the story was a battle series. There were reasons.
The manga's author had once done the illustrations for a famous RPG, and through that connection he had borrowed the magic system, along with any number of other settings, for the comic.
Set against Baby Mom's hard sell, Commander 13 gave off a thoroughly gloomy air.
From the sound of it, Commander 13 had tried to learn it once already and failed. And he wanted me to do what he couldn't?
His claim to genius was no exaggeration whatsoever. Commander 13—Yoel Asad—was an all-round prodigy who ranked at least third in every single field that existed in Immaculate.
Being told to master something even a man like that had failed to master left me reeling. And yet, for some reason, Baby Mom was full of bold assurances.
I was only half convinced, but I decided to trust her for the time being.
A short while later, I opened the post she had put up and found a video waiting there.
She couldn't actually mean for me to watch this, could she? So you could upload videos in here. Startled by the discovery, I hit play, and a woman appeared.
Long, voluminous orange hair, a cute and bright face. Slender, and yet the whole of her gave off a lively energy. I had seen that figure before.
Maybel's future self, from episode sixty-one—the finale of Magical Girl Maybel.
"All right, class is starting now!"
Adult Maybel in that nostalgic guise—Baby Mom—set briskly to work. Onto the kitchen table she set the little toy-food models children use for playing house.
Then—
"Yap!"
The moment she pointed, the toy food turned into real food.
"There. You saw that, right? And that concludes the lecture!"
And with nothing more than that, the lecture video ended.
"…."
I was struck dumb. Commander 13 went so far as to swear outright.
Faced with an answer that held not a shred of doubt, I was silent for a moment, then posted a reply.
To my own astonishment, I understood exactly how it worked!
I had watched a single absurd video, and I was already sure I could do it too.
I lifted the arm that wasn't cradling Akasha and extended it toward a rock of a suitable size. I gathered mana, but I didn't recite a single spell. What I needed wasn't an incantation. It was imagination—the act of casting the dream I carried onto reality itself.
"Hoi."
⟨ Dream Made Real ⟩
The rock I had pointed at became, in an instant, a baby crib.
"Graaaah!"
"Woof! Woof!"
Even the monsters raised a racket at the impossible sight. Honestly, I—the one who had cast the magic—could hardly believe it myself.
While the rest of us reeled, Baby Mom went on.
Baby Mom said my race and my circumstances had become my talent. Commander 13 was not so easily convinced.
Commander 13 told me how to film. I laid Akasha down in the crib, recorded it, and uploaded the video to the post.
Nobody had the slightest interest in Akasha or the baby crib. Their attention had gone somewhere else entirely.
Baby Mom spent a moment gaping at the peculiarities of my race, then went on.
Thanks to the magic Baby Mom had passed on, I could finally prepare to raise a child. With magic I built not only a crib but a house, and I made heaps of toys a baby might actually play with.
I had prepared for everything.
"Please, open your eyes! What on earth is wrong with this child?"
None of that preparation mattered, because Akasha had sunk into sleep and would not wake.
At first I thought he was simply a long sleeper. Once the sleep stretched past a full day, I understood it was an emergency. He didn't eat. He didn't cry. He only slept. I worried he might die like this, and yet there was nothing wrong with his body. He simply would not get up.
I begged the Gallery for help, but the other possessors were just as lost about the cause as I was. I had even filmed a video and posted it, and all anyone could do was panic.
Commander 13 offered a theory.
However extraordinary a possessor might be, they weren't in the same place, and so they could do nothing. I took the advice and was about to leave Akasha Island. That was when it happened.
Without warning the space around me split open, and someone came bursting through.
"Hey, nympho. You been keeping all right?"
"…Heiznel?"
An old mage of a witch with a thoroughly delinquent air. Heiznel—a member of the Hero's party, and once my comrade.
I was startled to have someone I knew show up out of the blue, and Heiznel, looking me over, looked just as startled.
"What's with the kid? You finally screwed up, got yourself pregnant, and turned into an unwed mother?"
"N-no. I didn't give birth to him. I happened to pick him up."
I shook my head at the bizarre misunderstanding.
"What brings you here?"
"Came to see you, didn't I? Not so much as the tip of your nose for the past year."
"You used high-tier magic—person-seeking, Spatial Transfer—just to look at me?"
It was absurd. Given how this world's magic had developed almost entirely toward combat, arts like those weren't the sort of thing ordinary effort could activate.
When I pointed that out, Heiznel clicked her tongue.
"Sharp, aren't you. Fine. I didn't come purely to see you. …I need your help."
"With what?"
"The Demon King's Remnants have shown themselves."
Already?!
I swallowed the scream that nearly tore out of my mouth. The Demon King's Remnants appearing was an event that existed in the original work. But that was supposed to be years from now!
The original plot had just lurched wildly off course, and I had no choice but to be horrified. Then Heiznel said something even more horrifying.
"And these damned bastards are demanding to meet you."