Episode 65: Noel’s Magical Implements
The next morning, the mission to investigate the monsters of the independent city of Mond began.
According to the reports reaching both Roselia and Lyon, monsters had recently been appearing on the roads connecting Mond to each kingdom.
Merchant caravans had been attacked, and more and more traders were coming forward with complaints of damage.
If this continued, Mond would lose its role as a commercial city, which would have a serious impact on both nations as well.
(The more calmly I think about it, the more I realise how heavy this mission actually is…)
The moment they left the city, Noel pulled a large mirror and around eight small crystal orbs out of his robe.
“Amazing!! You just pulled that out of your robe just now, didn’t you!? Your pockets aren’t nearly that big, are they!?”
At Yuria’s excited shout, Noel fled behind Edgar’s back as if for cover.
And yet, even while hiding there, he started talking away in great detail.
“T-this is a robe I made by applying the principles of a magic bag. The mechanism’s basically the same as a magic bag — you can pull all sorts of things out from one of the pockets on the inside of the robe. The theory behind it isn’t especially difficult, and it doesn’t even need a constant supply of magic. It just takes a fairly long time to make, so it ends up expensive, but it’s a fairly popular product even so.”
“That’s amazing!”
Unbothered by his torrent of rapid speech, Yuria clapped innocently.
She’d been a little anxious when he’d pointed out that she was a magical implement, but Yuria herself didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Noel. Explain the crystal orbs instead. You want these two to help out too, don’t you?”
“Ah, right. Um, but…”
“What?”
“I’ve already talked a fair bit, so… have Edgar do it…”
He said this in a feeble voice, then sat down behind Edgar’s back, knees hugged to his chest.
She’d assumed he’d talk endlessly given the chance when it came to magical implements, but apparently that wasn’t quite the case.
(…No, maybe it’s less that he’s worn out from talking, and more that he’s bad at asking someone else for help.)
From what she’d heard over dinner the previous night, the two of them were childhood friends, and Noel had apparently always been like this.
“Can’t be helped, I’ll explain instead. This mirror is a magical implement that lets you see monsters inside a barrier. The barrier that corresponds to this mirror needs to be cast using the crystal orbs. When you channel magic into a crystal orb, it flies off into the distance, as far as the amount of magic allows.”
“…So the orb automatically decides the size of the barrier, based on how much magic is put into it.”
Burkhardt nodded. When it came to magical implements, he was far more knowledgeable than Fiine.
“That’s right. Basically, what makes this implement so good is that it senses the amount of magic and tells you the limit. If you try to cast a barrier by sheer manpower alone, the precision drops whenever magic runs short.”
Ordinary barrier magic works by first fixing the area the barrier will cover, then activating it.
As Edgar said, if the amount of magic falls short, the barrier’s precision drops.
Naturally, a sufficiently skilled mage would understand the range over which they could cast a barrier while keeping its precision intact, but that didn’t change the fact that this was a convenient implement to have.
(But that’s not the only thing impressive about this implement…)
Picking up one of the crystal orbs, Fiine mustered up her courage and spoke.
“S-so, in other words, you can combine the magic of several people to cast the barrier, right…?”
Magic, as a rule, worked by drawing your own magic circle and activating it with your own magic.
People cooperating by each using their own magic was common enough, but having several people activate a single spell together was almost unheard of.
“That’s right. So you can cast a wider barrier while still keeping some in reserve. There’s no point knowing where the monsters are if you’ve run yourself out of magic by then.”
As he spoke, Edgar handed out two crystal orbs each to the three of them, excluding Yuria.