Tact
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As we were waiting for the faraway vehicle to approach, the anticipation was increasing by the second. What were we supposed to do in this situation? Wave our hands? Stay motionless? Walk to the front? Sit? Lune had chosen to hide most of her body behind her sister, but I didn't think it was the appropriate response.
As for me, for now, I was mimicking Clair's behavior: doing nothing but looking expressionlessly at the carriage coming closer.
I might as well build up mana in the meantime.
“W-what is that?” Clair jumped in panic when she saw my spell in the corner of her eye. “Are you the one doing it…?”
As expected, she wasn’t too happy to see a large square clad in absolute darkness materializing from thin air.
She didn't need to look that wary, though. I had given up on a more experimental and much more uncertain spell for something more trustworthy, and yet her expression told me she thought I was a mad lad. Well, considering this particular spell and its large generation of mana had served as a catalyst for the pseudo-annihilation back then, maybe she wasn't wrong.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said, omitting this last piece of trivia. “It’s to ensure our safety.”
As long as I prepared in advance and stayed focused on my task, the risk was almost nonexistent. Increasing my mana was the right choice, and would definitely help if things went south in the upcoming encounter.
Now, I had to admit that using this spell served another purpose. Specifically, I wanted to put my new understanding of my magic to the test by using a familiar but complex spell. It was a good candidate because it was supposedly using a very similar formula to the spell I had just rejected because of its dangerousness.
The key difference lay in the mana density, which empirically was correlated with the strength of my spells.
Within this new framework, the low mana density of the spell prevented the dynamics from ever reaching this uncontrolled nuclear compression I was unknowingly asking for because the change was strongly opposed by some mechanism, be it Mother Nature, the Gods, or just the laws of the universe. Whichever it was, it constantly tried to restore the dynamics to their initial state and thus rendered in this case the dynamics alteration stuck in the middle at equilibrium.
More generally the idea was that, when the mana was dense enough, the resistance became too weak to stop the alteration and caused the system’s dynamics to shift all the way in one go, breaking any potential barrier it encountered. Only after consuming the mana and thus decreasing its density would it finally revert, appearing as a one-time conversion.
In my own words, it would be equivalent to saying the playwright tried to make the altered story eventually regress to its previous status quo, while the director could put more or less pressure to slow down or even stop this process entirely.
This explanation made sense to me, but I was conflicted. I wasn’t exactly feeling it and still failed to sense anything different during the execution of the spell. I could neither prove nor disprove the workings of my magic this way.
Intuition was normally a large part of how I used magic so, without it, innovating would quickly get troublesome.
Am I bound to become dependent on Clair, then?
“Isn’t it getting bigger…?” Clair noticed at some point.
“It’s fine. It just means it's becoming more efficient.”
More exactly, the returns I was fated to reap weren't increasing linearly with time passing, but exponentially instead.
I could see that Clair wasn't satisfied with my answer and was considering stripping away my magic again, even though she knew it would then interfere with my ability to protect them.
It wouldn’t disappear, though.
This spell wasn’t of the active type so, once it was activated, it no longer needed any maintenance from me and could power itself to expand indefinitely. If anything, stripping away my magic right now would make things worse since I would no longer be able to stop it. Several centuries or millennia would need to pass for ‘Ortu Solis’ to cover the entire world, however, so we had a bit of margin.
“It will scare away our visitors.”
“Let's see... I can do with one more minute... How about that?”
“... Fine,” she concurred.
It sounded like I was compromising, but I was already planning to do what I suggested in the first place. As Clair remarked, the size of the spell would eventually become a problem. It didn’t matter much for now since the mana panel was very flat, but the upcoming carriage might get a glimpse of the spell’s sheer size once it got close enough and the angle of sight changed. Another full minute was perfectly acceptable size-wise and, by then, I would probably generate more mana than was needed to protect us anyway.
How sad was it that I had to fake some negotiation to keep that girl from rejecting anything I suggested? I still hadn’t figured her out yet, and I was still in the process of trial and error to grasp what ticked her off.
Even now, I wasn’t sure why she was even considering talking to strangers when she was on the run to escape that foreign organization.
Were she not always so hostile toward me, I might have interpreted it as her showing some empathy. Frankly, I couldn’t rule out that she might just go on a killing spree to steal some provisions, so all the mana I was deploying was in part to prevent her from doing so. Really, if it weren’t for Lune, I doubt I would still be associating myself with Clair by now.
Once the shadows the dark panels were casting on us became a bit too imposing, I suppressed the spell and rearranged all the mana as a protecting barrier just high enough to trap or trip someone attempting to dash at us.
It wasn’t exactly public information, but I surmised I was manipulating a royal-class amount of mana. With that much, I could stop any fight in just a second.
And a few moments later, the carriage halted a short distance away from our group. Rather than a carriage, it was in reality more like a wagon, from which two men and their driver climbed down.
They’re not bandits, right?
I had already dealt with more than enough bandits in just a month, so I certainly hoped they were not. Fortunately, these guys didn’t seem like ones. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made their clothes “respectable”, but that was the feeling I got from their attire: plain, but upright.
Judging by their outfits, their ordinary hair colors that ranged from brown to gray, and the general appearance of their wagon, they weren’t of particularly high standing and worked on a farm or something along those lines. Not that I was taking a lot of risks by making that assumption, considering this profession was the most common for commoners who didn't live in big cities.
One of the men had a scabbard on his waist, but he wasn't showing any sign that he would attack us. Whether it was to avoid alarming us, or because they were suspicious of us, they all made their approach carefully. Anyone with eyes would think we were not an immediate threat, however. As much as it pained me to admit it, even though both parties were technically equal in numbers, these guys probably considered both Lune and me to be harmless little girls.
In any case, they stopped at some distance from us, as if to gauge our reaction.
Since they were not openly grinning at the idea of facing little to no fightback from us, these men were probably fine.
“Is it our turn to go toward them?” I whispered.
Clair simply shook her head and didn’t advance. I didn’t know what procedure to follow in the case of tense encounters between groups, so I wasn’t able to tell if Clair knew exactly what to do or if she was just doing whatever she felt like doing. As long as she was taking the lead, that was fine by me.
Eventually, one of the three men moved a bit more to the front and called out to us. “Can we come closer?”
“That’s fine, but keep it slow,” Clair responded in a firm and confident voice.
Is she used to do that after all?
The men moved forward with deliberate steps, and wariness in their posture. At some point, Clair raised her hand to stop them once they got close enough to talk without having to yell. I thought we were still too distant to speak comfortably, but that was probably just me and my weak vocal cords.
“Are you coming from the capital?” a man asked with what was likely worry in his voice.
“We are,” Clair responded plainly, her face unreadable.
The flatness of her answer made it difficult for the poor men to infer anything about the capital’s current state, assuming this was the essence of the question. Not elaborating further was on-brand for her so, at this rate, they would have to probe for answers directly.
“... What’s the situation over there?” a second man managed.
“The whole place was wiped out,” Clair stated bluntly. "No survivors."
Yikes.
Just like that, she told them. She would need to work on her deliveries because, as expected, the impact of her words hit them like a train. The color drained from their faces, and I was sure I saw the legs of the oldest guy of this bunch waver. I could concede that there was no perfect way to announce this kind of news, but telling them casually certainly wasn’t among the best ones. At least, even Clair seemed to have realized it and awkwardly sought some emotional support from her sister.
Soon enough, the men began murmuring to each other. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could guess they were debating whether Clair’s words could be trusted so easily.
"... Thank you for telling us," the man who carried a sword said with a complex expression. "I'm David. We were supposed to report to the capital and look for help, but there's no reason to do that now, right?"
He could try to conceal his distress all he wanted, but he wouldn't dupe me. He might not have wanted to lose face in front of girls younger than him, or perhaps he wanted to look like a leader capable of shouldering the hard truth to his two comrades, but I had already perceived the very moment his mind went from hope to despair earlier. I didn't know why I felt so compelled to observe these guys' every reaction as they learned the news, though. Perhaps it was similar to how one could get thrilled just by watching a friend react to their favorite movie, although that comparison was twisted on many levels.
Still, this man somehow seemed to trust Clair's words without asking for proof. From this and the fact these three had not even brought up the literal corpse of the merchant whose carriage we had been scavenging even though it was in plain view, the implication was that his group had seen some supporting evidence along the way. The question remained whether they had survived because they came from far enough or thanks to a special trick.
"Where are you heading to?" David continued.
"Wherever you come from, I guess?" Clair responded, surprisingly in line with what I wanted to say. "We were looking for a place where people survived."
"I see. We did lose a few people though, so our village is in a panic. You shouldn't expect much hospitality."
"We won't stay long. Do you think we can buy a couple of draft animals there?"
Way to go!
I was pleasantly surprised with Clair's way of investigating. She wasn't directly asking them if animals had died, but the men would have to tell her if it was the case.
That was at least what I thought Clair was doing until she flashed a large pocket of coins to get her point across.
She was serious about buying animals?! How does she even have that much money?
Not to mention, these coins looked very familiar. I was confident the Wetrekha Empire didn’t use the same currency as Ouronia, especially considering Ouronian historical figures were engraved on this money.
She stole it, didn’t she?
She had probably collected these coins during her stay in the post-apocalyptic capital. I understood that taking with us some perishables before they expired was justified, but stealing money didn’t sit well with me. Dead people certainly didn’t need it, but their relatives could have inherited that money.
Then again, thieves would likely come soon to the capital from all fronts to take as many items as they found, so claiming them first not to make a profit but instead to ensure our own survival might be acceptable. At least, that was sure to be the reasoning she would give me were I to complain.
“Our beasts of burden?" said the older guy. "You certainly can, but…”
From that hesitation, there was a catch. Either their beasts weren't exactly in great shape, or he was wondering if money even had value now that the capital was no more. Given that their mount looked just fine, it might have been the latter. The survival of the kingdom was not that obvious at this point, so I could see how the idea of giving away precious resources for a bunch of potentially useless pieces of metal didn’t sound that attractive anymore.
That’s fair.
“How about you take us back to your village, so we can negotiate there?” Clair brazenly suggested, with no sense of timing. “You said you no longer needed to go to the capital, didn't you?"
What's wrong with her?!
Was it the physical exhaustion from pulling the hand carriage that was making her forget all courtesy? They might have proposed to take us with them anyway considering their wagon was large, but she had ruined that occasion. Even if they gave in, they would remember us as pushovers.
***
Somehow, it had worked. As I had expected, the mood inside the wagon was gloomy, although Clair's boldness was only part of it. Besides this, we all knew that any conversation was bound to be depressing. That must have been the reason why Clair insisted that Lune, the only child among us, sit on the outside next to Lance, who was the one driving the vehicle.
Is she even a child?
Well, even though I wasn't sure how her complex genetics played a role in her apparent age, the rule of thumb in this kingdom was that mental development mostly aligned with physical appearance. She looked more like a child than me and generally tended to act more childish too, so she might as well be considered one. Not that using myself as a reference to assess her maturity was the best idea, be it physically or mentally.
“What will happen to this kingdom now?” Harold, the elder, pondered aloud.
“If even the royal family didn’t survive this attack,” David said, “We might be done.”
Well...
Prince Claude had a good chance of still being alive, in fact. I remembered seeing him at the Lockmond estate, after all. I had left almost immediately after the banquet, and definitely before him. I had no idea if or when he departed, but I highly doubted he would have been anywhere close to ground zero when everything went down.
Oh but then, he might not be a prince anymore.
Indeed, being the only royal left may have made him the de-facto new king of the Ouronia Kingdom. Hurray. Long live the king. Strangely enough, something told me he wouldn’t thank me for speeding up the process.
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“Don’t call it an attack,” Harold rebuked him in a stern voice. “What if it was a punishment from the gods? Do you want them to strike again because we ignored their warning?”
... Called it.
It was a matter of course that people would interpret it as some kind of divine intervention. Who wouldn’t, given the entire capital had fallen in the blink of an eye to a sudden, mysterious burst of energy?
And yet here I was, the real cause, sitting right in front of them while they lamented and prayed, observing their expressions full of worry and despair.
As I thought, I didn't deserve to travel with them. At least I had declined their offer to treat the mess which was my back, so I wasn't abusing too much of their kindness. The main reason was that the mere thought of my victims tending to my wounds was insufferable to me, but part of me also wanted to try my luck in recovering with only Clair's crude medical treatment. Were I to get an infection from it, there wouldn't be much I could do against it and I would die in a pitiful but fitting way. In a way, I was delegating my survival to karma.
Clair must have noticed how conflicted I was because she gave me a nod that seemed to say she would handle the talking. Was she being considerate, or did she just want me to keep quiet to avoid revealing something that would make this travel even harder?
Crops
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A mass collapse that lasted an entire day. Some casualties which included five children, as well as two adults who had died afterward either due to their location or what they were doing when it happened. Among the children, at least one infant had passed away after being unassisted for that long.
As far as I could piece together what I heard from these men’s accounts, this was the situation at the time this improvised party had departed in search of help and answers. Additionally, several other kids were still unconscious by the time they left. It wasn’t clear how many were “several”, though.
This is not the intel I need the most.
It was tragic, that was for sure, especially since the mayor's son was apparently among the kids who were still not waking up. Just those few deaths were unforgivable and would normally have given me nightmares for a lifetime. The issue here was that it simply felt negligible compared to just the capital, and didn’t matter as much in the grand scheme of things. If anything, their dramatic testimonies almost sounded like good news to me. Therefore, as outrageous as it was, I was essentially growing impatient because they were disclosing only trivial pieces of information between long pauses due to their fluctuating mental states.
What I truly wanted was to either confirm or disprove a much grimmer concern I had.
“... How are the crops?” I finally asked, realizing that at this rate no one would address the topic.
This got me a collective frown from everyone in the wagon. “... What about them?”
Yup, that probably came out as insensitive.
There were likely better ways to bring up this topic, but I needed to know.
“I assume your village doesn't rely only on importations from the capital,” I clarified. “How are your farms, right now?”
“They were fine yesterday?” Harold, the most farmer-like guy, told me after he reminisced for a second. “This year’s harvest isn’t exactly our top concern, at the moment.”
“... Is that so?”
There he was, looking at me as if I were completely off-topic. Perhaps he thought I was trying to lighten the atmosphere by asking something unrelated.
Not the top concern, huh?
I disagreed wholeheartedly, and part of me wished they took this topic more seriously. Then again, I wasn’t sure they understood the incident as a mana attack in the first place, so I could see why they didn’t consider plants dying. I wasn't even sure uneducated commoners like them knew that plants possessed a rudimentary mana system like any living being.
In any case, had the death of plants spread much farther than the death of people, things would have become much more severe in the span of a few months and could have eventually doubled or even tripled the total casualties. Famines were silent killers that could depopulate a nation even more than the catastrophe that caused them in the first place.
Fortunately that allegedly wasn’t the case in that village so, assuming that burst of mana had been uniformly distributed in all directions, the decimation of this kingdom’s population wouldn’t be coming next.
Ironically, now that I had a fair idea of the maximum lethal scope of my mana, I could surmise that most of the crops cultivated to feed this region had likely survived as they were located more to the north of the capital. Therefore, because all the mouths these fields were supposed to feed were gone, there might actually be a huge excess this year.
As I thought, I can’t relate to them.
Under the guise of being factual, I was in a way jesting about the deaths I caused. My rationality used to be one of the only traits I liked about myself and yet, right now, it made me feel alone and self-loathing. I felt oddly disconnected from the others, like I was observing how things were unfolding from a higher standpoint.
Strangely enough, I contemplated casually telling those guys I was the one who brought upon this incident, just to see their reactions. No doubt would it quickly make things feel more real to me.
***
In just a few hours, we crossed the distance and came close to this fortified village. In that time, we encountered about a dozen dead bodies. In addition to being a surprisingly telling speed comparison between this wagon and our Clair-driven hand carriage, it also showed that those men had indeed seen more than enough corpses along the way to not be too bothered by the dead body that lay next to us back then.
According to their story, the initial group they were part of had encountered survivors who had been affected by the privation of water that accompanied the mass collapse early on, and that group had decided to split up to take care of the victims.
They're truly nice guys.
It didn't sound like they met people in critical condition due to just the mana response though, which was consistent with an inverse square law propagation. With the difference between life and death becoming more sudden the closer they got to the origin, their reduced group only saw deceased people once they passed this death point. Before then, they had only encountered people who recovered.
In the distance, a lone guard waved at us. This view contrasted with the deceased men at the entry of the capital I saw only a few days ago. Part of me found it reassuring, but knowing a lot of people were alive behind these walls also meant that I would certainly be exposed to the reality of people still recovering from this unprecedented catastrophe, and all the distress that came with it. The apprehension was dreadful.
We passed the gate without any check and, probably determined to fulfill the remaining half of their mission, Lance cut right through the heavy tension that originated from all the uneasy eyes on us by driving us through town without stopping.
Once we got to a house near the riverbank, he finally halted the vehicle and turned to look at us. “We’re at the mayor’s house. If you don’t mind, we would like you to join us for our report.”
“I think we'll pass,” Clair told him back.
Come on, how can she say that even though she basically forced them to drive us here?!
Did she genuinely not understand basic social norms, or was she willingly subverting them? There was a limit to how antisocial and tactless this girl could be. Poor Lance looked bewildered at having been rejected so quickly, too. Even Lune empathized with him by putting her hand on his shoulder.
“I-I see.” he managed. “This is not mandatory…”
In a way, seeing Clair act like this with people other than me didn’t feel too bad. It showed that she wasn’t just hating on me specifically, but more on anyone who wasn’t her little sister. Still, although I believed she was in the wrong for being so cold with these nice men, it wasn't fair of me to expect her to do everything in my stead to begin with.
“... I’ll do it,” I declared, albeit reluctantly. “I’ll accompany you.”
“You?” Clair frowned, intrigued that I took some initiative for once. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” I nodded and faced these guys. “Let’s go.”
“Um…" David started in a reluctant tone. "You don’t have to.”
“Dragging a child with us is a bit too much…”
“We’re better off going alone.”
“I’m an adult though?!”
Awakening
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Waiting for these men to finish their conversation with the mayor in another room, I was left alone at a table with a plate full of cookies and such in front of me.
They’re treating me like a child anyway, aren’t they?
One could argue that it was standard for a guest, but the small glass of milk that accompanied the plate suggested otherwise. That was a bit too much for an adult guest, especially when there was neither tea nor coffee to pour milk into.
I wasn’t giving in regardless of their motivations, and the fact that my body could barely withstand dairy products had little to do with this determination. I had to admit however that ingesting all that would serve as an efficient way to replenish my calcium reserves and alleviate my accumulating exhaustion.
Ignoring that little voice in my head, I stood up and started looking for something, anything to do. Whether these guys were making me wait here to convey that the future of their village was none of my business or as a way to spare me from such grim topics, the fact remained that I felt uncomfortable doing nothing but drowning in my stupid thoughts.
At this point, I was almost looking forward to being called into the office to give my side of the story to the mayor. Well, maybe not the actual story, since I planned to corroborate Clair’s version of the events. Most notably, it included me meeting these two sisters about a year ago and us being located north of the capital when this "divine" incident happened. That would explain how we survived and witnessed the tragedy of the capital we described in the wagon.
I disliked the idea of lying to their face, but telling the truth would implicate both Clair and Lune as well. This wasn’t much, but I was at least planning to actually inform them about the nature of that burst.
As I idly looked at the rustic decorations in the living room, I saw a half-opened door in the corridor. This place was the mayor’s house, where he had relocated his office after the recent events so that he could remain close to his still unconscious kid. So, given that this house was much smaller than a mansion, I figured by a quick process of elimination that the child might have been in that room in the back.
I leaned a bit and, surely enough, a young boy was sleeping on a bed. I didn’t know if the mayor had more than one child, but the current time led me to believe he wasn’t just napping. The woman who was sleeping on a chair beside him, which I assumed was his mom, supported that.
What a troubled expression she has.
The exhausted look on her face reminded me of my own mother when she had stayed by my side after I caused that first explosion a few years back. The difference was that this boy might never wake up to realize how much his mother was concerned.
In the end, I never stopped worrying Mother.
I kept using my magic to the point of injuring myself or even becoming dangerously sick from overusing it, even though I had sworn back then that I would be more careful with it.
Moreover, as soon as I became an adult, I selfishly put myself in unnecessary danger by becoming an adventurer for fun. I was well aware that Mother had cried many times over this, but I did it anyway. I had been an ungrateful and self-centered daughter, only bringing shame to my family.
And now, I didn't know what the best course of action was once I returned to Phesiora. I could play dead, making it appear as if 'Alice de Ravendall' had died along with the countless people near the capital, or I could return to my family and risk bringing about the demise of the House of Ravendall.
For now, I was only guided by the visceral need to see with my own eyes how well the people I knew were faring, while I was leaving all the complex and subsequent decisions to future me.
Quietly, I approached the bed until I could see the boy's face from up close.
Now what?
For a while, I poked his body and gently opened his eyelids, but I noted no reaction whatsoever. From the absence of movements of his eyes and the sluggish dilation of his pupils when I turned some of my mana into light, I could tell this wasn’t just a normal slumber. It was more like he was in some kind of comatose state. How severe it was, I wasn't sure. If I had to guess, it might have been the metabolic kind of coma.
After all, it wasn't such a big jump in logic to consider the intense rejection response from his mana had thrown off some sort of balance and made his body shut off. This power-saving mode would give his body some time to figure out how to solve the issue without consuming too much energy.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect something like that to happen to younger individuals. A bit like how one could in theory gradually develop a resistance to poison, bumping into a variety of mana signatures throughout their life was bound to lead to less intense rejection responses. As such, it seemed conceivable that this boy had yet to develop such a resistance and thus fell into this coma while adults recovered after several hours.
However, I feared the situation was trickier than that.
Throughout this improvised examination, I used that cylindrical device I had acquired after we defeated Lune’s pursuers not too long ago. Supposedly, it was a true divine artifact. The lack of buttons or other movable parts didn’t make its use obvious at first glance but, like all divine artifacts, it was designed to start working as soon as the user made their mana course through it. This made grasping how to use it on the fly possible.
Moreover, I had seen it in action once when that girl had passed this thing all around me. I assumed it was a bit like 3D-scanning an object. Therefore, even without documentation, I managed to somehow make it work.
While I couldn't interpret the results with perfect accuracy, even my inexperienced self could tell this boy had mana flowing all over his body.
Things would have been all well and good if he were fifteen or more, but he wasn’t. He didn’t even look older than nine, for that matter. At such a young age, it was unlikely that mana would be circulating since his mana veins were still developing. His mana should have been slowly building up somewhere in wait for a functional mana system, and yet, it was overflowing in a still-growing body.
This was definitely the source of this imbalance within his body. More specifically, the mana expenditure of his body trying to adapt to this mana system was greater than the mana recovered by his underdeveloped veins at all times, so he was probably losing mana by the second.
As such, one sound conclusion would be that this boy’s mana system had been kickstarted too soon by the immense wave of mana that had bathed this kingdom.
In other words, he had been awakened.
The spherical divine artifact with which temples would usually awaken fifteen-year-olds probably applied a localized push of foreign mana to gently get mana to circulate inside a body. On the opposite, my method was much more brutal and even activated the mana veins at the same time, regardless of their maturity.
What a terrible way to awaken.
In that regard, the mana burst’s effects resembled the use of unofficial and illegal awakening artifacts as they both could lead to complications like a coma or even death. Chances were that the handful of children who had passed away in this village were just a bit younger than this boy and simply ran out of mana faster.
Those who were less than seven or eight years old were probably safe though, as their mana should be negligible and their mana veins nonexistent. They had nothing to awaken. This was good news, but it also opened the possibility for anyone between ten and fifteen to have been forced to awaken, wasting their potential by interrupting their education while they were still on a learning curve.
... How far?
It was starting to get old even for me. I had just crossed out the death of crops as an existential threat for the kingdom since it didn’t spread further than here, and yet I had now to consider a different but still problematic kind of propagation.