The Spear's Selective Appetite
Orichalcum (4) — Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! A vibration brimming with seasoned finesse! Had my signature weapon evolved into a bladed dildo? I cried out in horror at this unprecedented crisis.
“What the hell?! What on earth is going on?!”
“I-I don’t know either!! I didn’t touch anything!!”
“That’s exactly what people say when they’ve definitely touched something they shouldn’t have!!”
Anyway, observation first. I roused my inspiration and activated Beck-an. It wouldn’t be too dignified, right? I chose to believe my spear wouldn’t suddenly turn into a grand lance and explode. When I examined it closely with Beck-an, I finally understood why the vibration was happening.
‘Is the spear rejecting mana?’
The mithril blade’s mana absorption remained unchanged. The culprit was the shaft. The wood—harvested from that cost-effective monster called a Trent—was repelling the mana Larilura had poured into it. The displaced mana seemed to be vibrating the surrounding air. That was the source of the tremor.
‘It’s like someone cranked a phone’s vibration setting up to ten or twenty times.’
No, even that comparison felt too cute for the intensity. A better analogy would be blasting a classical concerto through a death metal band’s amplifier.
“S-Senior! Here, take this first!”
Larilura, flustered like a broke college student whose cockroach had vanished from under a pot lid, tossed me the jade seal. I drew the mana back into myself to recover, yet the seal’s mana remained almost entirely intact.
—Zzzzt!
At that moment, a flash of intuition shot through my neurons like an electric current. Holding up the seal, I asked,
“Larilura!! Did you not use the mana I gave you?!”
“Huh? N-No, I didn’t! I was about to, but before I could finish using my own mana, the spear started going woooong!!”
Our voices rose over the spear’s relentless noise. I decided to trust my gut. While charging the seal with my mana, I grabbed the shaft. I fully expected my hand to shake like one of those vibrating massage belts at the gym, but the moment I touched it, the spear fell silent—as if a newborn baby had returned to its mother’s arms.
—Whirr.
With a dying whimper that wasn’t quite a whimper, our mithril spear shut its mouth.
‘What the hell? This isn’t some anti-theft feature.’
Had the spear developed an allergic reaction to any mana that wasn’t mine?
I was dumbfounded, but first I needed to check whether its death-metal babbling had been heard outside. More precisely, I intended to check.
【What is all this racket!!】
—Bang!
While Norde and Larilura stood frozen, a middle-aged man burst through the lab door, apparently having noticed the commotion. The “nothing happened at Tiananmen Square” plan had failed spectacularly.
‘Ah, shit.’
This world’s soundproofing technology was absolute garbage.
***
The portly middle-aged man introduced himself as Yofsi, the laboratory caretaker. One might assume a middle-aged caretaker sounded unimpressive, but anyone familiar with the scale of accidents mages in this world caused during experiments would never make that mistake again. Managing the experimental impulses of mages ranked 6-star and below—mages who didn’t even have their own labs—was essentially the magical equivalent of a coast guard rescue swimmer, only far more dangerous.
“You’re saying the spear is rejecting mana?”
True to his profession, Yofsi was fluent in Britannian and grasped the context within 0.1 seconds of hearing my self-introduction and explanation.
“Yes. I don’t know the reason, but that’s what it looked like to me.”
“Hmm. Not wood that absorbs mana, but wood that rejects it.”
When I answered, Yofsi looked troubled. This was that thing—the thing that drained your energy because it meant more work. I understood the feeling, so I didn’t press him.
“……May I appraise it for a moment?”
“Please do. Ah, will there be a fee?”
“If I were still at the item appraisal desk, perhaps. But not anymore.”
Thank goodness. Scams like that were common during travels—striking up a conversation under the pretense of giving directions only to demand money, or drawing some random picture and trying to sell it for a few coppers. Those existed in this world too.
“Let’s see……”
Yofsi made an old-man sound as he examined the shaft.
“Oh!”
Less than a minute later, he let out an exclamation of surprise. The fact that my first thought was “Is he setting up a scam?” made me slightly ashamed of my own cynicism.
“Norde, sir? Where did you obtain this spear?”
“Is that question necessary for the appraisal?”
“No. The appraisal is already finished. Look here.”
Realizing I wasn’t going to volunteer information, Yofsi held the spear out to me.
“Do you see the letters here? You may already know, but the F-like character engraved on the spear is a rune. It serves to strengthen any magic imbued into the weapon.”
“I’m aware. That’s why I was planning to imbue it with Puppetry magic.”
“Pardon? You intend to use such a third-rate spell that only street performers employ?”
“……Huuuh.”
Larilura’s eyes curved into crescent moons. Sensing he had stepped on a landmine, Yofsi wiped the sweat from his pudding-like cheeks with a handkerchief and forced a laugh.
“Haha. My tongue slipped. Puppetry is a subclass of Psychokinesis. Considering the difficulty of enchantment magic, it’s actually a reasonable choice for a spear.”
Even after the excuse, Larilura still looked displeased, though she let it slide without further interrogation. Whether her glare had truly been forgiven was another matter.
“We already knew that much. If you could tell us the cause of the problem, we’d appreciate it.”
“Ah, yes, well. The reason I asked about the spear’s origin is because the shaft has the property of repelling any mana except for a specific, predetermined one.”
“I see. Why would the shaft possess such a property?”
“W-Well, that is……”
Yofsi broke into a cold sweat under Larilura’s bug-squashing glare. It wasn’t fear. Middle-aged men tended to either explode in anger or suffer emotional damage when scorned by a young beauty. This was his own fault, so I didn’t feel sorry for him. His comment had been the equivalent of a customer walking into a phone store only to be told, “Why the hell are you using that piece of trash?”
Even after the discriminatory slip-up, he didn’t seem like a bad person at heart. Looking somewhat dejected, Yofsi answered while nursing his wounded pride.
“Problems like this occur in wood that has received powerful mana since it was still growing.”
“Powerful mana?”
“Yes. To use a human analogy, it’s like a child who has only ever eaten gourmet food becoming a picky eater. There are laboratories that cultivate wood this way, which is why I was surprised you managed to craft a spear from such premium material.”
“……So that’s what happened.”
What came to mind was the magic that had restored my broken spear. The spell I had analyzed and modified from Dana’s healing magic while in a rampage state. It was a technique that revived and grew wood that had been cut down, processed, and essentially dead—like shocking a corpse back to life with electricity.
‘So that’s why it only doesn’t reject my mana.’
The healing magic had replaced the mana of the ruined city with my own before being cast. If I interpreted it according to what Yofsi said, it meant the spear shaft—once content to eat whatever it was given—had tasted an extremely expensive steak and become corrupted. Now it refused to even touch any other food because it had ruined its palate. Damn thing was acting picky despite being an inanimate object.
“Haa…… It’ll be inconvenient to use as a weapon.”
“No, how could that be?! Since it repels mana, you can use it to break or block spells! It accepts your mana while rejecting the enemy’s! This spear will serve as both an excellent weapon and a shield!”
Yofsi looked genuinely horrified at my words. Perhaps lying during an appraisal to a fellow guild member—and a prospective one at that—was too risky. The evaluation was absurdly high for a weapon that belonged to me. Or maybe it was thanks to Larilura glaring at him from behind. So this was why blackmailers walked around with burly thugs. I gained a sudden enlightenment as I stroked the spear.
‘A weapon that recognizes its master.’
It wasn’t like the spear had developed a will of its own, but once the thought occurred to me, it somehow looked a little cute. Human hearts really were fickle like that. Seeing that I was satisfied, Larilura’s eyes also softened. Yofsi let out a sigh of relief as well.
“Thank you for the appraisal. However, with things like this, it’ll be difficult for me to ask someone else to enchant the spear, won’t it?”
“Yes. In that case, you would need to either pour in mana far stronger than the spear’s repulsion, increase the mana compatibility between the enchanter and Norde, sir, or attach another item to it.”
“What method is there to increase mana compatibility?”
The first and third options were roughly within my expectations—force-feeding the picky spear or attaching an external hard drive like the wooden talisman on Tabula’s mask.
‘But there’s also a way to raise mana compatibility?’
“It’s not difficult at all. A man and a woman simply need to share their hearts through deep communion.”
Yofsi answered while wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief in typical old-man fashion. But what the hell did he just say about communion?
“Communion?”
Fortunately or unfortunately, Larilura didn’t seem to understand the Britannian vocabulary. Yet given her calm and innocent reaction, how had she misinterpreted our relationship? The bulldog-faced magical old man smiled warmly.
“Yes. Germania’s ancient rituals have something similar. The mana compatibility gained through communion drops after one or two hours, but if the pair is truly well-matched, it can even contribute to each other’s growth.”
“Compatibility, you say? Ahaha♡! Senior and I are already a perfect match in all sorts of ways!”
Larilura. That’s not what he meant. Support, not that kind of support. Whether she knew my mental state was plummeting or not, Larilura looked delighted, as if she had received a compliment. It seemed the notion that Germania was sexually conservative was nothing more than a sweeping generalization. After all, even in sexually open countries like Japan or America, there were plenty of extremely conservative individuals.
“As expected! You two looked extremely close at a glance. My eyes must still be too young to hear the sound of knots in wood! Hahaha!”
Whether one could call that bulldog laughing so innocently “open-minded” was debatable.
—Creep.
Whether intentional or not, the blatant sexual innuendo made irritation rise within me. But there was Odin’s warning, and the old bulldog didn’t seem malicious, so I decided to endure it. In my father’s generation, giving couples compliments laced with sexual harassment had been an everyday occurrence. Endure it. Endure. Lamaze breathing, level one.
“……Thank you again for the appraisal, Yofsi.”
I placed a hand on Yofsi’s shoulder and spoke gently. It was a rude gesture toward someone I had just met, yet for some reason Yofsi’s face turned pale. I wondered why. Wow! How fascinating!
“I feel bad for continuing to trouble you, so we’ll be on our way. That’s all right with you?”
“Y-Yes, sir!!!”
When we said we were leaving, Yofsi fled first. Watching his hefty boar-like dash, Larilura asked curiously,
“Senior, why were you angry?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
Should I explain what “communion” actually meant? I considered it for a moment, but no matter how I thought about it, it seemed like a crazy idea. Even if this incident came back to haunt me later, explaining it right now felt like too heavy a burden.
“Ah! The sisters are over there!”
It happened right after I had thrown responsibility onto my future self. Spotting the party waiting at the waiting area, Larilura waved her hand excitedly like a child whose mother had come to the playground.
“Sisters! The mage uncle said that if Senior and I do deep communion, our compatibility will be amazing♥!”
“Ah.”
This house really was good at picking up foreshadowing.