Innovation

 

The shoes worn by giants of the age have no soles.

—A proverb of the Scarlet Clan, on how great inventions appear out of nowhere

 

"In other words… the beings we've been calling spirits up until now — Undine, Jack Frost, Salamandra, and so on — and the things we thought were just natural phenomena… clumps of fire or water. If we assume they're fundamentally the same thing, then those phenomenon-like beings — let's call them lesser spirits, for convenience — should be capable of learning orders too."

Even if they couldn't, it wouldn't matter. Summoning a spirit meant carving out a natural phenomenon into the shape you envisioned. All I'd need to do was carve out a lesser spirit that was capable of learning orders.

"If we can teach a complex action as a single order, we should be able to eliminate the need for long incantations altogether. It would essentially work the same as enchantment magic."

When I finally came to my senses after rattling all that off in a burst of excitement, the faces staring back at me were covered in question marks.

"Wouldn't it be faster to just try it? Mel, conjure some fire and hit that thing with it."

Innis wiggled both hands, and a pair of gauntlets… the Transparent Butler… rose from within her sofa and danced through the air.

"Don't put the fire out even if it hits, okay?"

"I'll give it a try. Dear flame, fly through the sky and hit Innis's Transparent Butler!"

When Mel chanted her spell, a flame appeared on her palm and flew toward the Transparent Butler. But just before it struck, Innis deftly moved the gauntlets out of the way.

"Hit it!"

One additional command from Mel, and the flame changed course midair, slamming right into the Transparent Butler.

"Mm, nicely done. Now teach that fire the movement it just performed. The order should be…"

"How about 'Strike'?"

Innis glanced my way, and I answered.

"Works for me."

"Okay, got it. So, dear flame…"

Mel trotted over to the flame enveloping the Transparent Butler and started talking to it. The sight of her chatting with a pair of blazing, airborne gauntlets was quite surreal.

"I think it's good!"

"Then put out the fire and come back over here."

When Mel waved goodbye to the flame, it vanished without a sound.

"Now conjure fire and give it the order 'Strike.'"

"Okay! Dear flame, come out!"

Mel produced a flame on her palm…

"Strike!"

The instant she gave the order, the flame spun in midair and shot straight at Rin, who happened to be standing right next to Mel.

"Whoa!"

I reflexively scooped Rin up and shielded her. The mass of flame slammed into my back, and the impact forced a groan out of me. I was a fire dragon at my core, so no amount of heat could ever burn me. But despite flame having no real weight, the pain felt like I'd been struck by an iron ball.

"M-Mentor, are you okay!?"

"Mm. I'm fine, I'm a fire dragon, remember? More importantly, are you hurt, Rin?"

I smiled at Rin, whose face had gone pale. This was probably going to bruise. Nina was going to scold me again, but…

"Y-yeah…"

"Then that's all that matters."

Rin nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"… Hey, Mentor."

Rin looked up at me with a somehow serious expression and called my name.

"I feel like… before, something just like this…"

"Mentooooooor! I'm so sorryyyyy!"

Just then, a large, fluffy mass of wool tackled me from the side, and I groaned again.

"Mel is, Mel is…!"

"There, there. Calm down. That was just an accident. It's fine, comes with the territory when you're experimenting with magic."

She squeezed me tight, and I tried to peel away the soft warmth being pressed firmly against me while soothing her, but Mel just kept sobbing.

"Don't cryyyy."

Then Chryse tugged at Mel's clothes, stretching up on tiptoe as far as she could reach.

"Chryse…?"

"Sit dowwwn."

At Chryse's instruction, Mel sat down on the spot, then followed another gesture and lowered her head. Chryse began rubbing Mel's head with clumsy little motions.

"Chryseee! Wahhh, thank you so much for comforting meee…"

Mel, overcome with emotion, swept Chryse into a tight embrace.

"She's buried, she's buried."

Innis casually rescued Chryse from the ample peaks she'd been buried in.

"… The targeting was probably off."

Watching this unfold from the corner of my eye, I mulled over what had gone wrong. The flame had successfully reproduced the flying portion, which meant issuing orders to a lesser spirit was working in principle.

But it hadn't been able to understand "strike Innis's Transparent Butler" as part of the instruction. Come to think of it, specifying a target by name was hard to adapt to other situations anyway. A simpler, more intuitive command would be better.

"What about 'strike whatever I point at'?"

"Hmm…"

I mulled over Rin's suggestion. The trouble was that we had multiple fingers. Normally a spirit would fly in the direction of an extended index finger, but spirits could be quite mischievous. If one decided to go toward a curled finger instead, the caster would be the one in pain.

"It might be clearer if we used something like this."

I pulled a pointer from my coat. I hadn't used it much lately, but it was the stick I'd always used to point at the blackboard during lessons.

"Mel, could you try again using this?"

I handed the pointer to Mel.

"And if possible, something less dangerous than fire this time."

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"Light Orb."

A soft, spherical glow shot toward Yuuka at roughly the speed of a thrown stone.

"Whoa. What's this?"

Yuuka slipped aside, but the orb paid no mind to her line of sight or stance, simply flying toward her as though drawn by a magnet.

Or so I thought, but in the very next instant the orb had been split cleanly in two from top to bottom and dissolved away. A stone sword was already in Yuuka's hand. I hadn't even seen her draw it.

"That scared me! What was that just now? There wasn't any incantation, right?"

Personally, I was far more startled that she'd dodged a homing orb of light and cut it in half.

"Was that… Mel's doing?"

Ara, appearing alongside Yuuka, stared wide-eyed at Mel.

"Sure was!"

"That's incredible! Making Instructor Yuuka draw her sword in a single move!"

Mel puffed out her chest with pride, and Ara grabbed her hands in excitement.

"So, Mentor says this might be something even you could use, Ara."

"Is that true!?"

No sooner had the words left Mel's mouth than Ara was right in my face. Way too close.

"Probably. It should be much easier than summoning a spirit…"

Compared to summoning a spirit with a living form… a greater spirit… calling forth a lesser spirit was far simpler. Anyone could do it. And that seemed to hold true even when additional orders were involved.

"Mel, could you fire off another Light Orb? And Yuuka, just keep dodging for a bit."

"Okayyy. Light Orb."

"Huh? Wait—"

Mel pointed the tip of the pointer at Yuuka and briefly called the lesser spirit's name. At first, we'd been summoning the lesser spirit of light and then giving it an order separately, but it was Innis who realized it was simpler to just weave the order into the name when summoning it.

"Ara. Try calling this spirit using the exact same name Mel just used."

"Here you go, Ara. Just point this at Instructor Yuuka and call the name."

"Understood. I'll give it a try."

Taking the pointer from Mel, Ara aimed it at Yuuka, who was still nimbly evading the orb of light.

"Light Orb!"

An orb of light identical to Mel's appeared from the tip of the pointer and hurtled toward Yuuka.

"Wonderful, it worked!"

My eyes went wide and I clenched my fist. Some time ago, Mel had managed to summon a second Nuckelavee even while the one I'd summoned was already present. I'd been so baffled that I'd nearly torn my hair out, but on further reflection, I already knew the concept at play.

Bunrei — the divided spirit.

In Shinto, it is believed that a deity can be divided infinitely, that sharing its power does not diminish the original, and that the divided portion possesses the same power as the whole. These divided deities are called bunrei, or wake-mitama.

I suspected that the spirits of this world had the same or a similar property. When I asked Mel to test it, she was able to summon as many Nuckelavees as she pleased.

But controlling a greater spirit was difficult. Spirits were capricious beings with power far exceeding that of any person. Unless you were someone like Mel, beloved by spirits, summoning and commanding a greater spirit always carried the risk of unexpected accidents. Even more so when trying to control one that someone else had created.

Lesser spirits, however, posed no such concern. They had will, but not emotion. Teaching them orders required talent like Mel's, but… simply summoning and using a spirit that had already learned its orders didn't require much talent.

"Hey, big bro, how long am I supposed to keep dodging?"

Yuuka called out, still weaving between the orbs of light as they traced separate arcs through the air. Her voice snapped me back to my senses. Those orbs had no physical destructive power whatsoever. They were simply bright. So once one hit you, that would be the end of it, but…

"Hey, let's see how many she can dodge!"

Before I could tell them to stop, Rin piped up with that suggestion.

She borrowed the pointer from Ara and launched a Light Orb. Then Innis took it and fired one off, Chryse sent one flying, and when the pointer was finally pressed into my hand, I reluctantly launched one more. Six orbs of light converging from every direction, and yet Yuuka kept dodging them all.

"I could handle another three or four, easy."

Far from struggling, she actually had the audacity to say that.

"… That's absurd."

Innis murmured in a stiff voice.

"Right? Instructor Yuuka's amazing, isn't she!"

Rin replied cheerfully, but I was fairly certain that wasn't what Innis had meant.

"Hey, Mentor."

Her sofa drifted over beside me, and Innis spoke with a strained expression.

"This is kind of… we're witnessing something incredible right now, aren't we?"

"… Yeah. Probably so."

Only Innis and I understood that the era of magic as we knew it was coming to an end.