Transfer

 

There are things in this world that should be handed over directly, and things that should not.

That was, without question, supposed to be the latter.

 

"Wouldn't it be faster to just throw a spear?"

That was Yuuka's assessment upon seeing a crossbow.

Wrong person to ask, I thought. A crossbow's greatest advantage is how little training it requires. Its operation is closer to a gun than a bow. With just a small amount of practice, anyone can learn to use one.

For a Swordsaint who'd spent over two hundred years honing her craft, the whole premise was the exact opposite.

"Innis, what do you think?"

"Hmm, well. Like you said, Mentor, if hundreds of people took aim with these and fired, it would be pretty nasty."

In front of Innis, who was sprawled across her sofa, the Transparent Butler clattered away, fiddling with the crossbow.

"Ehhh, none of those would hit me."

"Want to test that?"

Yuuka struck a bring-it-on pose, and with a sharp thwip, a bolt was fired. She snatched it right out of midair.

"You're the only one who can do that, Yuuka."

Though I had a feeling Nina could pull off something similar by manipulating plants.

"Either way, it doesn't seem like it'd be very effective against spirits, though…"

Innis said with a note of disappointment, eyeing the crossbow.

Even with the spread of sorcery and the establishment of the licensing system, rampaging spirit incidents hadn't gone away. If anything, they'd been increasing year by year along with sorcery's proliferation. And yet, no effective countermeasure had been found.

"How devoted of you."

"I never said I was looking into this for Ara's sake."

Innis spun around to face away from Yuuka, who'd said this with a smirk.

"I never said anything about it being for Ara's sake, either."

As the half-elf girl's grin turned increasingly mischievous, Innis let out a pained groan.

No effective countermeasure against spirits had been found… but individual approaches, born of personal talent, had matured considerably. Mel dealt with them by summoning even stronger spirits. Innis contained them using countless magitech devices. Yuuka could simply cut them down with her sword. Among them, only Ara lacked an effective means of fighting back.

That said, his excellent physical abilities made him tremendously useful for rescuing victims, so I didn't think he needed to worry about it.

"So you told Yuuka about you and Ara, too."

"You're the one who told me to ask her, Mentor."

Innis said, pouting.

"All I got were love stories about people I've never met. Wasn't any help, though."

"Well, I only know my dad and mom from after they got married."

That made perfect sense. Yuuka existed because the two of them fell in love, so of course she wouldn't know anything about Yutaka and Aqua before they started dating… Wait. Was that actually true?

"I've heard enough about how different races can find happiness together. What I want to know is specifically how to make someone you like fall in love with you back. The easiest method possible, please."

"Wouldn't you be better off asking big bro than me?"

A nagging sense of something off clicked into place the moment the conversation turned my way.

"There are all sorts of stories, right? Like about Big Sis Ai, or about Yuuki…"

"If you know stories from that long ago, you should know about your own parents, too."

Oh, right. The Swordsaints had their oral traditions and whatnot, so they knew an absurd amount about the past.

"Nope, no clue. Neither of them would talk about those days."

Was that really how it worked? It seemed strange to know about events from nearly nine hundred years ago but draw a blank on something a mere three hundred years back.

"Well, my own story, huh…"

I folded my arms and thought it over. Innis fixed me with an expectant gaze.

How we'd fallen for each other, before we got married…

"She fell for me first, so I didn't really do anything."

The instant I said it, a thwip sounded and a bolt flew past my cheek, struck the wall with a sharp clang, and clattered to the floor.

"I-I said the easiest method possible!"

"If that's how it worked, I wouldn't need to ask in the first place!"

Even knowing she hadn't aimed to hit me, having a bolt fly past my face was genuinely terrifying. When I protested, Innis shouted back indignantly. She had a point.

"… This… why does the bolt fly, I wonder."

Then, abruptly, Innis said this while gazing at the crossbow.

"It's not that complicated a mechanism, is it?"

Pull the trigger, the latch holding the bowstring releases, and the tension in the bow snaps the string forward. The bolt is propelled by that force and flies. Strip away the mechanisms for drawing the string and holding the bolt in place, and the underlying structure is simple enough even for me to understand.

"The Spirit Principle, Mentor. Things don't move on their own. Everything in this world—"

"Moves only by will."

I completed Innis's sentence. That was why submerging a waterwheel in a flowing river, or building a windmill in a windy valley, would never make them turn on their own.

The fundamental logic that separated the common sense of the Earth I knew from the common sense of this world…

I had named it the Spirit Principle. This world runs on the will of spirits. On the surface, it resembles the physics of Earth, but at its core, it is utterly different. Set up the same environment, align the same conditions, run the same experiment, and you might not get the same result. Not because of imprecision in recreating the conditions — but because the very logic underpinning the world is different.

"All I put into this is my will to pull the trigger."

Innis said, clicking the trigger mechanism. The bow wasn't drawn, so naturally no bolt fired.

"And yet a bolt I never even touched flies… Why?"

"Huh? Isn't that obvious?"

Yuuka drew the sword at her hip, took a stance, and slashed at empty air.

"When I cut something with my sword, I'm not touching the thing I'm cutting. But my will travels through the sword and propagates to the target. Same thing."

True enough. On the surface, that much held whether you were talking about Earth's physics or this world's.

"… Yuuka, could you draw this for me?"

But Innis, looking as though something had clicked, handed the crossbow to Yuuka. Yuuka looked puzzled but gave the string a smooth, easy pull… Normally you'd brace the tip with your foot and haul back with your whole body to draw it, but she just pulled it with her arms like it was nothing…

"This bow, right now…"

Innis ran her fingers along the deeply curved limbs of the drawn bow and murmured.

"Yuuka's will is loaded into it. Still loaded, held in place."

She nocked a bolt and aimed at the wall.

"When I pull the trigger, that will is released… and the bolt flies."

With a thwip, the bolt flew and embedded itself in the wall. The same brick wall that had deflected the bolt earlier. The power was clearly far greater than before.

By Earth's physics, this made no sense. A bow's power is determined by its materials and how far it's drawn. Who draws it shouldn't matter.

But in this world, it did. Even drawing the same bow the same distance, one drawn by the frail Innis would be far weaker than one drawn by Yuuka. In other words, despite Innis being the one who pulled the trigger, the bolt's power came from Yuuka's will.

"Will can be… stored. It can even be transferred to another person."

Gazing at the bolt embedded in the wall, Innis murmured.

I couldn't grasp the implications of what she was saying.

But I could tell she'd seized upon something.

Something that might just change the world.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"… You're really leaving?"

"Yes."

Nokia nodded at my question.

"If I stay in Scarlet any longer, I fear I'll never be able to leave your side."

Her speech was a far cry from those first days after arriving in the village.

Nearly a year had passed since Nokia came to Scarlet.

"You don't have to go. Everyone would be happy if you settled here."

A kind, earnest traveler who shared countless fascinating tales from distant lands, she'd become a beloved figure in Scarlet in no time. If she announced she was giving up her travels to stay, no one would object.

"Everyone… you say?"

Nokia gazed steadily into my eyes as she asked.

"Yeah. Chryse has really taken to you, and Innis, Ara, and Mel would all miss you. Same with Nina, Yuuka, and Rin. And everyone else, too…"

I listed every name I could think of, but Nokia simply stared at me in silence. As though there was a name I'd failed to mention.

"Give it up. That's just how he is."

Nina heaved a deep sigh and spoke to Nokia, who answered with a rueful smile. I had the distinct feeling everyone was exasperated with me…

"Oh, right, I almost forgot to return this."

"… What is this?"

Nokia tilted her head at what I held out to her.

"Your crossbow. I was holding onto it."

Her confusion was understandable.

… It had been magically remodeled into something else entirely by Innis.

"It still works the same way, technically, but the stock holds ten bolts now and the next one loads automatically after each shot. Any bolt of the same diameter should work, so just refill from the bottom after you shoot. The power's gone way up, too. Within a hundred meters, it can punch clean through iron armor from the front, apparently."

"How on earth did it end up like that!?"

Honestly, I wanted to ask the same thing. I did ask, actually, but I couldn't understand the explanation.

"Let me give you a parting gift from me, as well."

With that, I stepped back to make sure I wouldn't crush Nokia, then shifted into my dragon form, peeled a single scale from near my shoulder, and offered it to her.

"One of my scales. Keep it under your clothes and it'll keep you warm in winter, and it works as armor, too. You could probably sell it for a good sum, if it comes to that… Nokia?"

When she didn't react at all, I shifted back to human form, puzzled.

"You know…"

Nina said, her voice dripping with exasperation.

"That's probably the first time you've shown Nokia that form."

Nokia — the woman who had gasped in wonder nearly every day since arriving in Scarlet — was standing there, perfectly still, eyes rolled back, having fainted dead away without uttering a single sound.

Her departure ended up being delayed by about a month after that.