TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 5 Part 2

And after I finished telling them about the Illusion Canceler report I’d received before the ceremony, a question suddenly occurred to me.

“By the way, Grassa. With a magic circuit… could you use 【Duplicate】 to copy just that inside a magic stone?”

“Hm. I’ve never tried, so I don’t know, but if you’ve got a magic stone, I can test it.”

As she said that and held out a hand, Nikka spoke up anxiously beside her.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It’ll be fine. I’m not making the circuit activate or anything.”

But Grassa clearly didn’t care either way.

“You’ve got one or two magic stones on you, right? I’m curious too, so hurry up and hand them over.”

If anything, she was pressing me for magic stones like a mugger.

“I don’t mind the stones, but which magic circuit are you planning to copy?”

“This one should work, right?”

Grassa answered while tugging open her collar and pulling something out: a pendant.

“I can see down your shirt.”

“As if you could see anything with it open this much. More importantly, this looks easy, so it’s fine, right?”

The pendant swaying from Grassa’s fingertips had once been a cursed pendant, the very thing that had driven them into a corner that day. But none of its former look remained now, aside from the magic stone set in the center.

Because during our travels, I had reworked it in the carriage and remade it into a magic tool.

Its effect was simple: by pouring mana into it, it could send an SOS to me exactly once.

The magic stone had been low-quality to begin with, so I hadn’t been able to make anything particularly elaborate, but the girls had accepted it happily and still kept it close at all times.

“This good enough?”

I pulled a magic stone about the same size as the one set into the pendant from my storage and placed it in Grassa’s palm.

“Yeah. Okay, watch. I’m gonna try it.”

Grassa stepped a few paces away, held the pendant in her right hand and the magic stone in her left, and closed her eyes.

I focused my awareness to “see” the flow of her mana. If anything felt off, I’d have to stop her immediately.

“Nngh.”

The instant Grassa’s 【Duplicate】 activated, I saw mana stream from her body toward her right hand first. When it wrapped around the pendant, it gradually converged on the magic circuit carved within.

Normally, once mana flowed into a magic circuit, the circuit would activate and some effect would trigger.

And yet, there was not the slightest sign of the pendant’s circuit stirring in her hand.

“What a strange sight.”

“I can’t see the mana flow, so I don’t really understand… but it’s safe, right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Just like when Nikka used 【Resurrection】. It’s clearly different from a normal mana flow, but for some reason, I don’t feel uneasy.”

“The same as mine… Then it’ll be okay.”

Nikka murmured in a voice that sounded genuinely relieved.

“It’s starting.”

The mana that had gathered in Grassa’s right hand suddenly surged to the left in one rush, then vanished into the magic stone in her left palm.

“Ah, now even I can tell!”

“You’re kidding…”

The magic stone, pristine and transparent up until that moment, began to take on an intricate pattern as the mana flowed, as if the design were being carved into it. No one was touching it, and yet the circuit was being born from mana alone. We could only stare, speechless.

“Phew… Think it worked?”

The first to break the silence was Grassa, her words packed with the satisfaction of a job well done.

“It’s perfect! You did it!”

“H-Hey, let me see that.”

I hurriedly took both the pendant and the magic stone from her hands, almost snatching them, and compared the circuits etched into each stone.

When I confirmed there wasn’t even the tiniest difference between them, I let out a long breath and returned only the pendant to Grassa.

“Well?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s exactly the same circuit.”

“So that means it worked, right?”

As Grassa beamed, I answered as calmly as I could manage.

“I can’t swear it’ll actually function until we test it… but for now, I’m going to run mana through it as a trial, so step back a little.”

“If you run mana through it, won’t it stop being usable?”

“Right. You said it only works once.”

It was true. That pendant’s circuit would break after a single use.

But there was no way to confirm whether a magic circuit worked without actually feeding mana into it.

“Who do you think I am? I’m just going to push mana in right up to the edge, enough to confirm it’ll work without actually activating the magic tool.”

Easy to say, hard to do. It had taken me about half a year of training to master that technique.

I carefully guided mana into the magic circuit carved inside the stone I was holding. Within what I could “see,” the flow looked no different from Grassa’s earlier.

Even though her circuit hadn’t shown any sign of activating, the moment my mana entered it, the magic circuit clearly began preparing to trigger.

“Whoops—close one.”

Because my mind had wandered, I nearly activated it.

I hurriedly cut off the mana.

“How was it?”

“It… worked, right?”

The two of them peered up at me anxiously, and I forced the biggest smile I could manage.

“It was a total success.”

I handed the magic stone to Grassa. She accepted it with a grin just as wide as mine, then tugged Nikka’s arm and started whispering to her off to the side, away from me.

“What is it now…?”

When I tilted my head in confusion, the two of them finished their secret talk and came back over.

“Toa, we’ve got a favor to ask.”

“What kind of favor?”

“Could you use this magic stone to make one more pendant like ours?”

“Please! From me too!”

As I took the offered magic stone, I voiced the obvious question.

“You want a spare?”

“That’s not it.”

My guess was immediately denied.

“It’s not for us. We want you to make it as a present for Cheki.”

I got it.

Until Grassa said it, that idea hadn’t even occurred to me.

Just like the two of them, Cheki was highly likely to be targeted by anyone who learned what she could do. So they wanted her to have the same kind of pendant, one that could send an SOS to me if something happened.

“So you were that worried about Cheki, huh. If that’s what you mean, leave it to me!”

I decided to grant the kind-hearted request right away—

“Alright, no time like the present. If we start now, we should finish before Cheki and the others get back! You two help too, okay?”

I began lining tools up on the desk in the room.

“Uh… yeah.”

“…I feel like that’s not quite what we meant, but…”

I didn’t notice the two of them watching my back with awkward expressions.

—

A few days later.

We were performing our final checks in front of the Dwarf Kingdom’s main gate, several carriages lined up beside us.

Beyond this gate, the road led to the Great Tunnel that pierced straight through the Teenic Mountains.

That tunnel, which connected the continent’s northern and southern regions, had been carved out over countless years by the dwarves as part of building their nation. Back when it was first completed, it had sparked all sorts of disputes with other races, but now anyone could pass through regardless of race. Even in these days, when safe sea routes had been established, merchants and adventurers still came and went in great numbers with their wagons, and it had become one of the continent’s main arteries.

The four of us—me, Nikka, Grassa, and Cheki—were about to travel that artery on our way to the Volga Empire in the north.

“When my family used to travel as merchants, I went through it before,” Grassa said.

“Weren’t you scared?” Nikka asked.

“Not even a little. It’s not that dark inside the tunnel, and there are tons of strong people passing through, like adventurers and caravan escorts, so bandits and monsters can’t really pull anything.”

Just like Grassa said, I’d heard the tunnel’s security was exceptionally good.

“Besides, there’s nowhere for bandits or monsters to settle in to begin with,” Cheki added. “Cheki came through that tunnel too, right? I’m jealous…”

Of course, I hadn’t gone through it myself.

The Border Fortress lay far to the east, practically on the opposite side of the continent from the tunnel entrance in the west.

“Still… I was supposed to head for the Border Fortress, and I ended up in the Dwarf Kingdom on the exact opposite end.”

Originally, we were meant to go farther north from Loch, stop by Nikka and Grassa’s village to the east, and then head to the Border Fortress. And now we were going even beyond that, bound for the Volga Empire.

“And it’s not like we can suddenly decide not to go to the Volga Empire and head for the Border Fortress instead.”

While the three girls excitedly chatted about the tunnel, I continued my final inspection of our supplies. Once we left, I had no idea when we’d be able to return.

“Sorry I can’t go with you,” a voice said from behind me.

It was Vezzo, back from the royal castle after picking up a personal letter from the dwarf king to deliver to the beastkin chief.

“I heard that country’s even safer than this one, and the Demon King seems like a better guy than I expected, so don’t worry. More importantly—”

“Yeah. My sister will be returning soon in a carriage your brother arranged. I must be there to welcome her.”

The day before yesterday, a female beastkin named Lumisola—one of Vezzo’s companions—had come all the way to the Dwarf Kingdom to pass along that message from my brother. And Vezzo would be heading back to the Beast Forest with her to meet his sister.

“Don’t worry about it. Besides, I still need you to transport that ‘thing’ to my brother’s carriage.”

“If it’s too noisy, I might kill it on the way.”

Our eyes shifted to the lump on the ground—a mudball shaped like a snowman.

Needless to say, its contents were Lakkra.

Vezzo would haul him to the Beast Forest, and from there, my brother’s carriage would carry him to the royal capital to pay for his crimes.

“If you kill him, you’d be saving him instead.”

I understood the urge. Lakkra had kidnapped his sister and sold her off as a slave. But for him, death would be mercy.

A better punishment was being carried all the way to the royal capital in a mudball he couldn’t move in, taking more than a month.

“Don’t let him live, don’t let him die. Make him suffer.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Vezzo answered while glaring at the mudball. Even if he lost patience along the way and carried out his own justice, I had no intention of blaming him. Lakkra had done more than enough to deserve it.

“Vezzo! They said we’re ready!”

From behind the wagon parked near the mudball, Lumisola poked her head out and called to him. They’d been scheduled to depart yesterday, but because the personal letter wasn’t finished in time, they would be leaving the same day we did.

“I’m coming.”

Vezzo replied, then turned back to me.

“Someday, once everything is resolved, come to our village. You’ll be welcome.”

“Then come pick me up properly. I’m sick of being ambushed.”

“I doubt you’d be taken down by an ambush from us.”

Vezzo grinned, flashing his vicious fangs, then turned his back as if to say the farewell was done. He climbed into the carriage waiting with Lumisola, the mudball containing Lakkra loaded in as well, and left the kingdom behind.

After a short while, the three girls—who seemed to have finished their own conversation—came over to me.

“Huh? Where’s Vezzo?” Nikka asked.

“He was just here,” Grassa said.

“He was talking to you, wasn’t he?” Cheki added.

They looked around after noticing he was gone, but his carriage had already passed through the gate. There was no point searching.

“Come to think of it, he left without even saying goodbye to you three.”

“Whaaat?”

“He left… you mean back to the Beast Forest!?”

“I still hadn’t properly thanked him…”

The way all three of them slumped hit my conscience hard. But since I’d already pulled off a reasonably good farewell, chasing after him now just to redo the whole goodbye scene sounded brutal.

And if I didn’t do something, I had a bad feeling I’d be forced to listen to them complain the entire way to the Volga Empire.

“Then let’s at least leave first and chase after Vezzo and the others. If we go now, we might still catch them before the road reaches the great tunnel’s main route.”

At normal carriage speed, we wouldn’t make it—but if I supported us with magic, we should barely manage it.

“We can tell the dwarves we’ll regroup at the rest stop along the way. That should be fine.”

I’d heard the first rest stop toward the Volga Empire wasn’t that far. The tunnel was a straight shot anyway, so we could just head there first and wait.

“Could you?” Nikka asked, looking up at me.

Behind her, Grassa and Cheki waited with shining, hopeful eyes.

“Of course. Leave it to me!”

“Thank goodness…”

“If Toa says so, then we’re fine.”

“Then I’ll go tell the dwarves!”

The three of them smiled and started to hurry off to finish our departure preparations.

But they had to stop when a dwarf came sprinting toward us from the royal castle, his face pale with urgency.

“T-This is terrible! Lord Toa, please come to the king at once!”

“What happened? Why are you panicking?”

“Something terrible has happened!”

Even as he looked ready to collapse from lack of air, the dwarf forced out an unbelievable report.

“We’ve received an urgent message… that the emperor of the Volga Empire has passed away!”

(TERNLF Vol. 2 END)

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