The Truth Can Be Bitter Sometimes
The Truth Can Be Bitter Sometimes
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you shall win a hundred battles.
You must know your enemy and know yourself to achieve victory in war.
I did not know much about magic beasts. My entire body of knowledge was limited to classification systems like Calamity-class or Extinction-class. I did not even understand the full capabilities of an Extinction-class magic beast.
The same was likely true of everyone else. The person who possessed even a little more information about the current Extinction-class magic beasts was Vermel.
Whether it was to return to Earth, or to prevent this world's destruction, the possessor was necessary.
Especially in my case, unlike at the beginning of the semester, I now had people I had to protect. My friends and my mentor, and even countless others working together for our mutual benefit.
Until I left this world, they were all people I had to go forward with. The option of them suddenly dying one day had to be eliminated. Having come to my senses after experiencing this Black Death crisis, I racked my brain desperately until classes resumed.
All that reasoning began with the Black Death.
A single Extinction-class magic beast had driven the entire Empire into terror. Yes, just one.
I did not know how many Extinction-class magic beasts there were. Perhaps around nine? If the 'Nine Heavens' in the title Great Machines of the Nine Heavens was meant as a clue, that number seemed highly probable.
If so, a question should have arisen at this point.
Why, with such immense power, did they not launch a full-scale invasion of the Empire?
To find the answer, I searched through records of nations the magic beasts were said to have destroyed. I consulted history books and scoured world maps.
There was no commonality among the destroyed or declined nations. Not geographical location, GDP, military power, politics, socioculture, or religion—nothing.
Their lack of commonality was their commonality.
From this, I could understand. They currently possessed the power to destroy the Empire, yet they refrained from doing so.
Magic beasts were not stupid. Just during the entrance ceremony, they had used a feint-east-attack-west strategy, and this time, when the northern front was pushed, they spread an epidemic nationwide to collapse the interior.
These bastards had some other ulterior motive.
I did not know what that ulterior motive was. But the evidence that I was not irrelevant to that plan was overwhelming.
The mysterious Extinction-class magic beast that borrowed the body of an Iron Drake and appeared before me at the entrance ceremony.
The bird-beaked mask monster that withdrew from the capital the moment it saw me without even fighting.
Both knew me and also refrained from attacking me directly.
— I have heard well that you created Flare.
It was dangerous.
The magic beasts were watching me closely.
To exaggerate a bit, they might even be monitoring me completely. Given their characteristic of meticulously planning to exploit human weaknesses, the likelihood they were observing me through methods I could scarcely imagine was high.
To take an extreme example, let us assume an entity possessing something like clairvoyance existed among the Extinction-class. If that were truly the case, no matter how grandiose a plan I devised, it would become useless to prevent the world's destruction.
Starting from the events in the underground waterway, their surveillance had probably been attached to Vermel as well. If I tried to contact Vermel and undertake something, they might notice and launch a preemptive strike.
Moreover, not a single person had died from the Black Death at the academy? Considering various collected reasons, they had no reason not to monitor us.
"What to do about this."
To organize information, I gathered everything that had happened so far and wrote it down on scrap paper. It was a task of drawing diagrams I had devised myself to verify causal relationships between individuals.
One question then suddenly occurred to me.
Why was I the only Gold-Eye Tribe in the capital?
Based on the past statements of the magic beast I saw at the entrance ceremony and the Plague Doctor, I dug intensively into this point.
And I established a hypothesis that the Gold-Eye Tribe and magic beasts shared some kind of relationship. It was a reasonable suspicion.
— Student Aether seems to have a constitution that simply does not contract the Black Death. Would it be possible for you to visit our hospital later for a blood test, for research purposes?
Normally, I should have contracted the Black Death when I nursed Rote. But I did not, and I easily got through the crisis suffering only mild fatigue. Considering the infectivity of the Black Death, which spread even through droplets, it was absurd.
That was not all. Since entering this body, I had never bled. Truly, not a single drop!
Yes, blood collection. Let us draw blood.
I chose a suitable day and ate more lunch than usual. After returning to the dormitory, using an upset stomach as an excuse, I sought out an awl. It was to prick my finger.
"What the."
Even applying force, the awl would not go in. The skin was clearly soft and pliable, but the dermal layer felt like it was made of something hard. Applying even more force did not make it go in; instead, the tip bounced off.
Fuck, what is this.
As things had come to this, it was a change of plans.
"Once you finish your experiment, clean up on your own and leave. Normally, undergraduates aren't permitted to use this lab, but you're being allowed because you developed Flare."
"Yes, thank you."
Having secured a spot on one side of the Fire Magic Research Lab, I sucked on a Mana Cigarette while keeping Flare fixed in place. I wondered if I really had to draw blood in this manner, sacrificing even my holidays.
The stated purpose was nothing special. Improvement of Flare.
The reality was to commit a foolish act. I operated Flare several times as if verifying the scroll's power, then at some moment brought my fingertip to the output section.
"Agh! Aaaagh! Aaaaagh!!"
It hurt like hell!! It felt like getting fractional laser treatment without anesthesia!!!
A shallow laceration formed on my right middle finger. No, perhaps it was not shallow.
Regardless, blood began dripping from the wound struck by the beam.
While stanching the bleeding on my finger, I simultaneously let a little blood flow into a plastic bottle I had brought in advance.
Oh, it was definitely not human blood. I felt dizzy thinking about what would have happened if I had shown this in front of doctors. Though whether a syringe needle could even enter this body was questionable in the first place.
The blood was generally red. So far so good, but there were clotted portions here and there.
Once these clotted portions were carefully extracted and dried for a day, they transformed into clustered beads. Why the hell was this stuff in my body?
"Starting this week, I'll begin lab tours I haven't been able to do for a while. Everyone, find a lab you're interested in and go observe what the professors are working on."
"Aether, is there anywhere you want to go?"
"Of course. I already scouted ahead."
I visited a professor who researched Transmutation and observed her experiments. As I watched the professor's alchemy demonstration with eyes twinkling like a puppy, she recognized me and started working on me, asking if I was interested in her lab.
Here, I lied that I was interested and heard a deeper explanation about the alchemy course.
Alchemy. To sum it up in a word, it was this world's chemistry. Even on Earth, the two disciplines had historically been deeply related.
I continued experimenting, mixing things. After everything finished, I arrived at the place where chemical waste was disposed of. The friends who came to tour the lab watched the processes unfolding in the laboratory moment by moment with amazed eyes.
Taking a suitable opening, I held out the bottle containing my blood to the professor.
"I want to know what this is."
The kids beside me made jokes asking if it was the Philosopher's Stone, but I brushed it off lightly. The professor, a specialist, looked at the red crystals inside the plastic test tube and gave exactly the answer I had expected.
"Hmm, this is cinnabar."
Ah, shit.
"You've been carrying around such a dangerous substance so casually. Still, you preserved it well, so it's fine. Now, I'll show you something interesting, so change into a lab coat and follow me."
Not only was my blood powdered, it was promptly burned. Some became vapor, and some bonded with oxygen and flew off somewhere. The professor, having collected the remainder as if sifting it, instructed a graduate student to bring a Cooling Scroll.
Once a box containing the vapor was confined over the Cooling Scroll and left for a while, a familiar-looking fellow emerged.
It was a liquid substance with a silvery luster. Liquid metal beads, possessing a tendency to cluster together due to high surface tension, wobbled and shook.
"In this way, mercury can be extracted from cinnabar."
Fuck, so, I mean, why was that inside my body?
If doctors had drawn my blood and analyzed it, my life would have been utterly ruined. The thought that I could have been branded by both the Church and the state, with them demanding to know just who the hell I was, leaving me with nowhere to go, sent my mind reeling.
"How is it? Isn't it fascinating?"
"Yes, it's fascinating."
"Any thoughts on interning in our department?"
"I'll think about it a little more."
Under no circumstances could this point be revealed to anyone else.
This explained to some extent why the magic beasts were watching me closely. Asking Vermel whether a magic beast with clairvoyance existed came next. I even received the answer there that one did. I had nearly ruined everything.
[So to summarize, you're saying the magic beasts were cosplaying as an ordinary student for a month because they were watching you from somewhere?]
I explained most of this process step by step to the Hardcover Book.
Yes, most. I didn't tell it everything.
[No, but if so, things don't add up, do they?]
After listening, the Hardcover Book clicked its tongue, as it were, and fluttered its pages, pointing out a part that seemed an error in my logical progression.
[Let's say there is an entity among the magic beasts possessing a skill akin to clairvoyance. Then that one would be observing you, Master, so why did it ask the possessor questions in written form? That amounts to telling them you've noticed the existence of that magic beast!]
That was accurate. I responded to those words with silence.
At my lack of response, the Hardcover Book let out only a dissatisfied hum. I grabbed the thing that had been gliding around nearby, shut it, and shoved it straight into a desk drawer.
[Excuse me. What are you doing...?]
Click.
[...Master?]
"I'm going to the end-of-semester party today, so wait here quietly."
[Ah, I'm genuinely dumbfounded! Do you have any intention of returning to your original world or not?! Hey! Aren't you going to do your research?!]
What was it saying. Of course I was full of intention to research.
Yes, indeed.