Let's Make It (4)
There was still time before the sun went down, yet Liyo and Erihi hurried back all the same. With their arms full of timber and stone, further exploration was simply out of the question.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
The moment they returned to base camp, they scanned the surroundings. Colonel Kastern and Major Brokenheart were nowhere to be found.
In their place, a single sentence written in Ascalian lay scrawled across the sand.
We're going hunting. If you get back first, please get a fire going.
No great matter. If they were out securing food, then this side had work of its own to do.
"Heave-ho."
Liyo set down the timber she'd brought.
"So what are we making first?"
"A cart."
It wasn't something they needed for immediate survival. But look at their numbers. They had Tiria for foraging and Rachel for hunting, didn't they?
Humanity had pursued efficiency since the dawn of time. Within a group — a tribe — each person clung to the one thing they did best and left the rest to others. That was how civilization had maximized its rate of progress.
Liyo excelled at invention, and so did Erihi. Having the two of them do what they did best would serve their survival better than anything else.
"We need a cart first if we want to haul more timber. I'm going to build a single-wheeled one so it can handle narrow paths."
"If you're planning something that big, you should draft a blueprint first, you know?"
"Hmm, right. Blueprints. But there's nowhere to draw one, is there? We've got calipers and a compass, so we can just eyeball it as we go, can't we?"
Liyo and the man clearly did not share a language.
And yet, they understood each other perfectly.
Experts in related fields always recognized their own kind.
To Liyo, who had studied metallurgy and materials engineering, there was something familiar in Erihi's tone. Not that she particularly wanted to grow closer to him because of it…
Still, for reasons she couldn't name, an instinctive sense of kinship stirred in her.
"There's nowhere to draw a blueprint anyway. For now, we'll just have to go by feel."
Liyo rolled her shoulders and picked up a log of oak. And right then—
"Hold on."
Erihi gestured for her to wait, then walked over to the stone bed.
"ABIETUS VHAN OPHEIM."
A low rumble answered.
The stones, responding to the Whieon, began to resonate as one.
Some were carved away; others rose and took shape. It was as if tectonic forces were at work across the tiny landscape of the bed.
It was magic in the truest sense of the word. Liyo had been half-mesmerized by the mystical transformation when she suddenly shrieked.
"Hey, that's my stone bed——!!"
Strictly speaking, of course, it wasn't hers. She'd only borrowed it by throwing a tantrum. But to Liyo, devoted lover of stone beds, this was as shocking as someone smearing chocolate on a mackerel and eating it.
And yet… something was off.
"Huh?"
"See? This way we can use it as a substitute for a blueprint."
There had been a reason Erihi reshaped the bed. Through precise manipulation of mana, he had drawn a diagram of a cart.
"LUMENT."
A soft hiss of sand.
The original drawing vanished, and a new form rose in its place. On a surface divided into a grid like graph paper, a single circle sat alone.
Snap!
He flicked his fingers, and the drawing grew denser still. Each square of the grid enlarged, and the circle drawn upon it expanded to match. Liyo realized at once what he had just done: he was adjusting the scale.
It was the kind of technical skill that would make any engineer's eyes roll back in their head.
What is this, a mana chalkboard? A drafting board on stone that I can draw and erase at will?
Anyway.
"Th-that's amazing."
Liyo's eyes went wide and bright. Her tail spun like a pinwheel.
"No matter how rushed you are, working without a blueprint is a bad idea. If you go by feel and the design is off even once, you throw away all that time and effort. If you can prepare thoroughly, you should."
She understood what Erihi, the enemy mage, was saying. He was reminding her of the fundamentals every engineer ought to know — and he was doing it with his eyes.
"Oh-ho."
Liyo let out a sound of admiration before she could stop herself.
For the past two days, she had listened to her two superiors, Tiria and Rachel, and kept her hostility toward Erihi carefully hidden.
Naturally, it was a front. The bright face she wore now could hardly be called sincere. Ever since the mages had tortured her as a child, Liyo's heart had long since been stained with darkness.
She would never take an interest in magic or mages again. Not ever…
Or so she had believed.
…Liyo?
Just a little — she was starting to grow curious about the man in front of her.
I showed the engineer several blueprints. She liked them a great deal.
Especially the way her tail whipped back and forth the moment I started drawing the cart design on the stone slab…
"……"
Smack!
I slapped my own cheek. Get a grip. Building a serious relationship with the beastgirl was necessary, yes — but getting bewitched by a fox was putting the cart before the horse.
That said.
A Holy Kingdom beastgirl showing interest in magic stones and magic? That was on the level of a luminous dragon. Honestly, how was I supposed to hold, hold, hold myself back?
This is bad. Senior has broken down.
Indeed. Since he cannot regard her as human, he intends to become a beast himself, does he?
"Let's make it~ Let's make it!"
The engineer hummed a little tune through her nose.
She and I set about framing the cart. Engraving into stone was something only I could do for the moment, so the beastgirl would sketch on the sand and I would transfer the design from there.
"The bamboo is about this wide, and each piece weighs roughly this much, so… factoring in the cart's movement, to support the target load…?"
The engineer gripped a stick and scribbled something across the ground. I'd been about to dismiss it as Ascalian, but a second look told me it was a formula.
Equations used in dynamics, I see.
The level at which she's developing these formulas is no joke. This beastgirl studied at university at the very least.
Our languages were different, and even the alphabets we used diverged in places. And yet there was no difference whatsoever in the methodology by which we understood and described the laws of nature.
From the shape of the equations alone, I could perfectly identify which formulas they were and which concepts she was applying.
I knew it then, by instinct.
This engineer was an intellectual. Smarter than the Valkyrie, and smarter even than the Saintess who could recite scripture by the yard. And it wasn't limited to academic cultivation.
Clever people were also skilled at hiding themselves. They understood that in social dealings, wearing a mask and keeping one's true feelings under wraps was generally the more advantageous path.
Winding the clock back to yesterday, when I first met this beastgirl — I recalled the reaction she had shown.
Grrrrr.
She had ground her teeth.
Blatant fury. It had carried a grudge deeper even than the Saintess's. Killing intent on par with the Valkyrie's. And yet that killing intent, too, had vanished the moment the Saintess and Valkyrie talked her down.
The Saintess had waved it off as simply a trait of fox beastgirls.
An engineer — not even a combat role — had no reason to hate me personally. So the emotion she had shown then must have stemmed from a grudge against the Magic Kingdom itself, or against mages as a whole…
Could she have been subjected to biological experiments by dark mages as a child?
The two tails alone are telling enough. There's a legend that the number of tails a beast possesses equals the number of souls housed within its flesh, is there not?
No amount of fretting would yield answers right now. I shook off the thoughts and refocused on designing the cart.
"One point six seven meters."
"Hm?"
"One meter, sixty-seven centimeters."
For a moment I thought I'd misheard.
This engineer didn't use the Holy Kingdom's system of measurement.
"What, surprised I don't use inches and yards? This is just more efficient."
She grinned, a little smug.
Ooooh, how can a creature wearing a beast's skin speak such noble words?
I decide what is human and what is beast. From this day forward, that purple bean sprout is an honorary citizen of the Magic Kingdom.
In a word: we had lost our minds.
Finishing the blueprint itself wasn't difficult. I had the practiced skill of someone who regularly designed scroll circuits, and the engineer seemed well accustomed to this kind of work herself. Matching each other's pace, we brought the design to completion.
With the plans done, it was time to process the timber and stone.
I took the stone; the engineer took the wood.
The fox engineer pulled a small saw and a carving chisel from her toolbox.
"Um, Goddess? A little help, please?"
In the next instant, holy light settled over the tools in her hands.
She stripped the bark from the wood in a single pass. She scored the cut lines with precise notches, then moved each piece one by one into a sunny spot. Every step of the process was swift and flawless, without a hair's breadth of error.
I, for my part, fashioned the wheel and a few other components.
Couldn't we make the body out of stone as well?
The mana cost would be extreme. And the cart would end up far too heavy.
By that logic, the stone bed is…
Ahem. There are some things a man simply does not compromise on.
If I built the entire cart from stone, I could have done the work alone — but there was no reason to.
I needed to build a serious relationship with the engineer, after all.
Working in tandem rather than hogging everything myself was obviously better for fostering a sense of camaraderie. It also cut the labor in half.
"Mage, we're back!"
At dusk, the Saintess and the Valkyrie returned.
The Saintess set down a basket piled high with wild greens and berries. Behind her, the Valkyrie came dragging a wild boar. She looked a little worn out.
I hurried over.
"Here, give me that."
"No. I don't need help."
"You said your body hurt yesterday. Why go out and push yourself all of a sudden?"
I snatched the rope in the moment she let her guard down. It was disgustingly heavy. She'd dragged this thing all the way here?
"This island seems full of food. We won't have to worry about meals."
The Saintess smiled softly. It was a gentle, moist smile, like bread soaked in milk.
Before dinner, the engineer and I took turns with the axe. We felled a reasonably large tree, split it in half, and smoothed the tops to serve as seats.
The three enemy servicewomen sat on one side; I alone sat on a short log to eat. The distance between us was about that, I supposed.
That was when the fox engineer rose, her tail swaying, and came over to sit right beside me.
Then she leaned in and whispered in Ascalian against my ear.
"Stone! Bed!"
I could understand simple words by now.
"Can I sleep with you?"
The beastgirl was asking, right now, whether she could share a bed again tonight.
I nodded. We'd done it for one day — two days, three, or more was hardly out of the question.
Her lips curved into a crescent. In the firelight, the soft folds beneath her eyes lifted with a smile. Her ears twitched with pure delight, as if she couldn't contain how pleased she was.
Having settled the sleeping arrangements, I turned my head back.
And I saw them.
The Valkyrie and the Saintess, staring at me with blank faces.