The Sequel
The Sequel
"Hahh... haaah...."
A sweet, acrid taste filled my mouth.
A heavy lethargy spread through my whole body. The muscles in my calves especially were so taut that I could already tell I'd be sore tomorrow.
"Master Rupert, you've only been running for ten minutes."
"Sir Mullers... are you familiar with the principle of relativity?"
"Pardon?"
What did he mean, pardon? Sure, to a knight like you, ten minutes was nothing, but to me it felt like I'd just run a full marathon.
The problem was that I'd boldly accepted Sir Mullers's suggestion to start by running thirty minutes every morning.
Why had I underestimated thirty minutes so badly? Or more to the point, was this body young but completely lacking in stamina?
When I was drawing, I never felt tired no matter how long I stayed awake, so I'd assumed I had decent endurance. But the moment I did actual physical exercise, it turned out this body was bottom-tier.
In the end, I collapsed flat on my back on the training ground floor of the estate. Sir Mullers, who had been watching, shook his head from side to side and let out a sigh.
"Master Rupert, didn't you say you wanted to learn the Mana Training Method?"
I was sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath, when Sir Mullers spoke to me.
'Mana Training Method.'
A special training method that knights in this other world learn. Knights who master it are said to gain superhuman abilities, like leaping to the height of buildings and shattering boulders.
I'd been tempted by that too and asked if I could learn it, but he'd said I needed to build up basic physical fitness first. That was why I'd started running.
Damn that original author. Couldn't he have just written in a setting where you can learn the Mana Training Method right away?
Thinking that I'd have to suffer through at least a year of this before I could learn it made me feel hopeless.
At minimum, a year. With my current stamina, it would probably take even longer. That was way too slow.
Who was I? A Korean, one of the people of delivery. Slow was for those Northern Europeans; I couldn't stand it.
"Isn't there some faster way? Like a secret elixir that suddenly boosts your stamina and makes muscles sprout when you drink it."
"Master Rupert, nothing like that exists in this world. Unless you count the legendary Gold Transmutation Stone."
"Gold Transmutation Stone?"
Sir Mullers smiled and answered my question.
"Exactly what it sounds like: a legendary stone said to turn ordinary stone into gold. Among alchemists, it is a dream treasure."
Wait, turn stone into gold? Isn't that basically the Philosopher's Stone?
Hearing about the Gold Transmutation Stone reminded me that Earth had an identical stone.
The phantom substance that was the goal and dream of every alchemist: the Philosopher's Stone.
Of course, it didn't actually exist, but the story was so famous that even ordinary people had heard of it at least once.
Well, this other world had alchemy too, so it wasn't strange for a similar phantom object to exist here.
'Now that I think about it, that reminds me of a real masterpiece.'
With the Philosopher's Stone and alchemy both coming up, a certain manga suddenly came to mind.
A nearly perfect shonen manga that had once plunged its readers into shock and horror before reaching a beautiful ending.
'Wait, this could actually work.'
I'd been agonizing over what to do for a sequel anyway. I'd only just now realized the perfect choice.
A subject that people in this other world could accept without awkwardness, yet one they'd never seen before.
The same premise had produced a work so good that only a handful of manga could compare with it.
"Story... wait, I need to work out the story line."
Once the subject for the sequel was decided, the story began unfolding in my head, and characters to fit it started coming to mind one by one.
The moment I started thinking about manga, energy suddenly surged through me. Strange how that worked.
Before I knew it, I'd gotten up off the ground and was dashing frantically to the estate's workroom. Sir Mullers, who had been watching me, shouted,
"Master Rupert!!! You haven't even done your strength training yet!"
I heard him, but I ignored it. It definitely wasn't because physical training was hard and I wanted to skip it. My blazing artistic spirit was simply leading me where it willed.
***
"Do you wanna build an ice man~."
In the workroom, Ada was wearing Elza's dress and holding a magic wand, singing the song I'd taught her.
'Hmm. This really is the perfect season for it.'
Elza's dress was supposed to have a narrow waist, but scaled to Ada's size, it bulged adorably around her belly.
I found it cute, but Ada apparently didn't like it. She looked in the mirror, said it wasn't right, and started refusing to eat the snacks I gave her.
Still, Ada was excited to be wearing the first merchandise prototype for <Kingdom of Ice>.
Sales were coming up soon, so I'd dressed her in it as a test, and from that moment on she had no intention of taking the dress off.
And that wasn't all. She'd bragged about the prototype to the young ladies her age, and all hell had broken loose.
'Please... show some restraint, Rupert. Or at least warn me in advance!!!'
Lately, a rumor had spread that if you visited our house, you could see the works I'd made in advance, so little kids had been visiting the estate every single day without fail.
The brats would go home and throw fits about wanting one too, leaving the nobles of the surrounding territories at their wits' end until they came begging me for mercy.
Since they couldn't buy cheap goods without losing noble face, they'd been purchasing expensive custom-made editions or hardcover editions every time, and apparently the burden had been greater than expected.
"Still, noble money is too sweet to give up."
Now I finally understood why my parents in my past life had been so afraid of the children's toy section in department stores.
But that was other nobles' problem, not mine.
They were loaded anyway.
Rather than charge ordinary commoners high prices, I'd rather charge wealthy nobles more and let them complain.
So this time, <Kingdom of Ice> had been published not only in a cheap commoner edition but also in a noble edition.
And it was insanely popular.
Custom-made editions were too much to handle, so I'd released a limited edition and a deluxe hardcover edition.
Since nobles couldn't buy the commoner edition without losing face, demand flooded toward those versions, producing quite a tidy profit.
In particular, for this limited edition I'd used a strategy of selling by queue order rather than by lottery.
'Master Rupert, this time we need a strategy people can actually see.'
That had been my idea after Esteban complained about the lottery system.
Apparently, up until now, a lot of slander had spread among the nobles about the lottery sales being rigged or sold through personal connections, causing widespread dissatisfaction.
So by introducing a first-come, first-served system this time, there was no room left for complaints about rigging or favoritism.
According to the merchant company head, even imperial palace attendants had stood in line, so that said everything about the fairness.
Anyway, the first-come, first-served system produced a line longer than anything the Yuren Merchant Company's main branch had ever seen.
And as a bonus, people who didn't know about it saw the line, grew curious, and looked into it, which increased book purchases.
"Ah, this part is really tricky."
But apart from the money rolling in, work on the sequel wasn't progressing as well as I'd hoped.
The obstacle I'd hit wasn't the story or characters, but a seemingly minor setting detail: the 'Transmutation Circle.'
'I can't think of a Transmutation Circle!'
The <Iron-Blooded Alchemist> I was currently making dealt with alchemy, so Transmutation Circles appeared frequently.
Honestly, even in the work I'd taken the motif from, they didn't carry that much meaning, so I could have just thrown something together.
'But that would be a shame.'
For research, I'd looked through several alchemy books and copied the Transmutation Circles that actually existed in this other world, but they were too plain.
Maybe because only simple ones were shown, they didn't inspire me to draw the distinctive Transmutation Circles I had in mind.
On top of that, if I threw something together, I'd definitely get called out for it later.
'Hmph, no real alchemist would use such shoddy Transmutation Circles!'
Thinking about the hate comments that would come, I needed to take care of even the smallest details.
But studying alchemy just for the manga felt excessive. Wasn't there some convenient book packed with convincing Transmutation Circles?
"Even I think that's absurd. Imagining some convenient book like that just showing up."
For now, I decided to revisit the Transmutation Circles later and started storyboarding the rest.
***
"Freeze!"
When Ada pointed Elza's wand at me and said the line, I had to stop in place.
Honestly, standing perfectly still as if frozen was torture, so I wanted her to release me quickly. But for some reason this kid was incredibly thorough.
Only after poking my body here and there with the wand she was holding and carefully checking that I wasn't reacting did she say,
"Unfreeze, hup!"
"Thank you, Princess Ada."
"I'll let you off!"
Watching Ada looking proud, I was finally able to let out a sigh of relief.
Back when she used to imitate the protagonists of picture books, I could just half-heartedly play along with the lines.
But this <Kingdom of Ice> had raised the difficulty of playing along enormously.
Still, it was a nice change of pace during work, so I went along with it. Though it might become a real problem later.
'Ada wants to go on an adventure!!!'
Last time, she'd thrown a fit about wanting to go on an adventure like Elza and Hanna, so I'd had to take her on a picnic to the forest within the territory.
And that wasn't all.
"Mana is a mysterious substance that exists in nature. It cannot be seen with the eyes, but it can be felt...."
After the role-playing session ended, Ada sat down next to me while I worked and started reading a book, then quickly fell asleep.
There was still a book clutched in Ada's hand.
'Fundamentals of Magic - Yustaf Heindel'
It was a magic introductory book I'd bought her because she'd fussed about wanting to use magic like Elza.
'She hasn't gotten past the first page for days.'
She clearly seemed to be trying hard in her own way, but every time she looked at it, she couldn't get past the first page.
Apparently, a book with nothing but text was nothing more than a sleeping pill for Ada.
"Ugh, I told you not to sleep here."
As I moved to carry the sleeping Ada to her bedroom, the contents of the book she'd been reading caught my eye.
After moving Ada to her bedroom, I got curious and looked through the 'Fundamentals of Magic' book she'd been reading.
Anyone from the modern world had dreamed about magic at least once. Curious whether there might be something to it, I paused my work and started reading in earnest.
But only the beginning was readable. The rest was full of content I couldn't understand no matter how much I read, so I quickly lost interest.
"So it wasn't being used as Ada's pillow for nothing."
It even made me feel sleepy. Just as I was about to skim it and close it, an interesting section caught my eye.
'The Role and Meaning of Rune Script Letters and Shapes'