Forging the Synthesizer
I just want to live quietly, but...
"So, what ridiculous contraption have you come to make this time?"
Garvan asked, rolling up his thick forearms.
I glanced at Luna standing beside me and asked,
"Lady Luna, you brought everything, right?"
"Of course~! You're the only apprentice who treats the great archmage like a pack mule~."
With a wave of her hand through the air, the circuit boards I'd made yesterday and bundles of intricately spiderweb-like mana wiring poured out from subspace onto the workbench.
Garvan scratched at his bushy beard, scrutinizing the engravings on the boards, then furrowed his brow.
"What's this now? I can make out some basic sound magic engravings... Hey, kid. This another music thing?"
"Ding ding ding. It's a brand-new instrument I've invented."
At my answer, Garvan let out a disbelieving snort.
"Instrument? Does this look like an instrument to you? To me, it looks like some impatient mage slapped together a magic bomb in a hurry."
"...Lady Luna said the exact same thing. That's why I came to get a proper outer frame to make it look like a real instrument."
Garvan eyed the size of the boards roughly and nodded.
"Hmm, so you just need me to bundle 'em up so they don't interfere, and secure 'em sturdy-like?"
As I started to nod at Garvan's question, something flashed through my mind.
Oh crap, I forgot something important.
"Ah, hold on. Uncle Garvan, besides the case, there are a couple more parts we need to make. They're called knobs and faders..."
I sketched a rotary dial and an up-down sliding lever on a piece of paper to show him.
Garvan looked at the drawings and shook his head.
"That's more in a mage's wheelhouse than mine. I can handle simple engravings or infusing mana into weapons, but crafting precise mana flow controllers like these—especially linking 'em to engravings without a proper blueprint? My craftsmanship alone won't cut it."
Mechanical parts alone couldn't control magic engravings in real time, it seemed.
Just then, Luna—who'd been watching with keen interest—raised her hand confidently.
"The great archmage can handle that! Lia, you just need something where physical movement adjusts the engravings separately, right~? Right~?"
Luna patted my shoulder smugly.
With Luna's magic backing it up, it was definitely doable.
"Perfect. Then make the faders for adjusting volume and ADSR stages with up-down sliders. Use knobs—the rotary kind—for the waveform's frequency per second and final output volume. Oh, and since we might add more parts later, don't make the case too hard to disassemble."
"Sheesh, you sure got a lot of demands, kid."
Garvan grumbled but moved to the workbench alongside Luna.
As Garvan and Luna put their heads together and got to work fitting the boards into a metal frame, Edelrin and I stepped back to watch.
Edelrin's mouth hung slightly open, mesmerized by the sparks flying from Garvan's hammer strikes and the mana wiring rearranging at Luna's gestures.
"Whoa... This is my first time seeing a dwarf at work up close."
"Is it that novel for you, Edelrin? I figured after living so long, you'd have seen it once or twice."
Edelrin shook her head at my question.
"Elves and dwarves don't usually leave their territories. Aside from trade, we hardly cross paths. And more than anything, artisans rarely show their process to outsiders..."
I asked out of curiosity, watching Edelrin's wide eyes dart around every corner of the forge.
"Come to think of it, when people hear 'dwarf,' they picture blacksmiths, master craftsmen, insane dexterity... that kinda thing, right?"
"Pretty much. And it's mostly true."
Edelrin nodded matter-of-factly.
Emboldened, I fired off another question.
"So, do elves really excel at archery and all that?"
"A lot of us are skilled with bows, yeah."
"What about you, Edelrin? Good with a bow?"
At my question, Edelrin's face fell a bit, and she scratched the back of her head.
"Well... I'm not great with spirit magic."
"What's that got to do with shooting arrows? Can't you just aim and fire?"
"Spirits usually assist with wind magic to guide the arrow's trajectory. That's why it's always a bullseye..."
Wind assistance? Talk about cheating.
My interest piqued, I pressed on.
"So how do elves build houses? You love nature, so you wouldn't just chop down trees, right?"
"Spirits help with that too. They can coax trees to grow into house shapes."
"...What about farming?"
"Spirits again..."
As my gaze grew colder, Edelrin waved her hands frantically, like she'd made a huge blunder.
"B-but it's a symbiotic relationship! Why would spirits help elves for nothing?"
"What's in it for the spirits?"
"Just contracting makes them stronger on their own. They can share some of the contractor's magic, so there's plenty of benefit for the spirits too."
Listening to this, it actually sounds pretty reasonable... Does it?
Fascinated, I kept asking.
"So... can humans contract with spirits too?"
Edelrin frowned slightly, looking troubled.
"There are rare cases among humans, but it's basically impossible. Understanding spirit speech is hard enough, and human mana structure is so different—it'd be really tough..."
Her uncertain tone trailed off as she glanced at Boksuni, dozing naturally on my shoulder.
Recalling my eccentricity of treating a spirit like a pet, she cleared her throat and corrected herself.
"...Actually, you, Teacher, might pull it off."
We passed the time with that pointless chit-chat until the heavy metallic clangs finally stopped, and Garvan's gruff voice boomed out.
"All done! C'mere and take a look, kid."
Where Garvan pointed sat something so convincingly real, it was hard to believe it came from yesterday's crude board clump.
The sleek black alloy body had the knobs and faders neatly arranged just as I'd requested, evoking memories of my past life's synthesizers.
Heart pounding, I sat down at the instrument.
For a test, I slid the faders to shorten Attack and Sustain, raising Decay and Release about halfway.
Then I tapped a key—
*Ting*
Not the long electronic drone from the mansion, but a clear, bouncy tone like striking a xylophone or marimba filled the forge.
Whoa... it actually works?
Satisfied it was functioning properly, I kept playing. Garvan watched with arms crossed, clearly intrigued.
"Damn, you're always somethin' else. How do you dream up these weird-ass designs and actually build 'em?"
"C'mon, Uncle. You've known I was weird since we made the guitar together."
Garvan barked a laugh at my cheeky retort, conceding the point.
"Fair enough. A normal kid wouldn't waltz into a dwarf forge asking to mana-bind a hollow wooden plank."
Garvan ran a rough hand over the synthesizer's smooth surface, then suddenly fixed me with a serious look.
"So, what's this one's for? You ain't plannin' to haul it to the square, are ya?"
"It's an instrument, so obviously for playing. Maybe swap it in for guitar sometimes during performances. Why? Something wrong with that?"
Garvan shook his head firmly, like it was a bad idea.
"You wouldn't know, kid, but when you played that guitar thing before, the Magic Tower mages took real notice. Lucky for you, it was a pure instrument with no mana engravings, so they just gawked and moved on."
He pointed at the synthesizer's gleaming mana wiring.
"But playing a full-on engraved magic tool in the square? Might as well advertise 'come kidnap me' to the Magic Tower. You could end up dragged off for a lifetime of lab rat duty."
Garvan half-joked, but a chill premonition swept through me.
I'd planned to quietly spread music in this world, but this synthesizer I'd made might be far more dangerous than I'd imagined.
I swallowed hard, staring down at the glowing board.
Is... this okay?