Kays Translations

Chapter 2: Survival with a Side of Magic

It had been three months since humanity lost electricity due to the crystal disaster.

I was somehow managing to survive in a lone cabin deep in the mountains, far from other people.

Scavenging food from abandoned homes hadn’t gone particularly well.
Thinking about it now, it was only natural—those who left their homes had likely taken as much food with them as they could.
Almost nothing useful—food, medical supplies, or fuel—was left behind. The same went for local shops and markets.

As a result, I had been surviving mostly on fishing, trapping, and foraging.
Even without electricity—or rather, because of its absence—basic knowledge of hunting and gathering had proven invaluable.
Armed with a field guide to wild plants and mushrooms, I ventured into the mountains; with traps based on knowledge from anime and library books, I caught rabbits and raccoons; and I fished using a rod found in an abandoned house, baited with earthworms.

My survival skills were far from expert-level, so hunting alone couldn’t fully meet my daily calorie needs. I made up the difference by slowly chipping away at my dwindling stockpile of preserved food.

Before the crystal disaster, I wouldn’t have thought much of wild animals raiding the vegetable patch in my backyard. “Oh well,” I would’ve said with a sigh.
Now? It made me furious. I was tempted to kill and eat them out of sheer spite.

Living alone in survival mode was tough.
But I had no interest in heading into town to join up with other survivors.

I’d seen zombie apocalypse movies—I knew how these end-of-the-world survival groups go.
They start out peaceful, but inevitably collapse under the pressure of food shortages and interpersonal conflicts.
My social skills were nonexistent. If I got caught up in some drama, I’d be the first to die. And I didn’t have any special skills or knowledge to contribute to solving a food crisis.

Sure, reality might not follow the exact script of a panic movie. But I knew for a fact that being surrounded by people in a shelter would stress me out to the point of getting sick.
That alone was reason enough to continue as a lone wolf.

In the grueling and uncertain life where my rice and canned goods dwindled little by little, the one thing that brought me hope and comfort was my Octa meteorite staff.

The adorable magic staff I treasured was my conduit for casting spells.
When activated with its resonant frequency—produced by a specific vocal tone—it could emit a white beam of energy.

This beam, as thick as an elephant’s leg, shot in a straight line between my mouth and the Octa meteorite.
Its power was enough to shake a compact car with a single blast.
It was incredibly useful for hunting.

I didn’t own a gun, couldn’t use a bow, and didn’t have the arm strength for throwing spears.
So when I stumbled upon a deer twenty or thirty meters away, casually grazing while staring at me, I’d usually have no way to bring it down.
That is, without the magic staff.

The beam struck the deer, and though it wasn’t an instant kill, it left the animal incapacitated. I could easily finish it off with a knife at close range.
Seriously, thank you, magic staff.

After over two months of survival, my daily routine had stabilized.

I used to be a night owl, but now I moved during the day to conserve fuel for lighting.

In the morning, I’d fetch water from the well, eat some pre-prepared food, and head into the mountains to check my traps.
I’d forage for wild plants on my way back and then go fishing at the river.

After lunch, I’d sharpen my knife, search unexplored houses for supplies, prepare and smoke any meat or fish I’d caught, or take care of other chores.

Evenings were for dinner, target practice with the magic staff, reading, and then bed.
I only allowed myself a bath every two or three days to save firewood.

That was my usual lifestyle, but today was a little different.

A peculiar rabbit had been caught in one of my traps.

At first glance, it looked like an ordinary wild rabbit.
However, embedded in its forehead was a red gemstone.

A tumor? A parasite? No, neither.
When I touched it—a small stone the size of my pinky nail—it felt hard and mineral-like.
It was a crystal.

The term “monster” crossed my mind.

If there are magic stones and magic, then wouldn’t monsters exist as well?

This world sure has gotten a lot more fantastical in just three months.

I carefully carried the dead, deformed rabbit back to my home for inspection.

Upon examination, I first determined that the rabbit itself was mostly an ordinary rabbit.
I’m no veterinarian, so I’m not intimately familiar with rabbit anatomy, but after nearly two months of hunting and butchering animals, I’ve gained some experience.
At the very least, I could tell it didn’t have two hearts, no brain, or any bizarre, unknown organs. It seemed safe to eat.

Setting the dissected rabbit aside, I turned my attention to the gemstone embedded in its forehead.

The gemstone was about the size of my pinky nail, slightly irregular in shape, and a deep ruby-red color.

It’s not unheard of for living creatures to produce minerals or mineral-like substances.
Akoya oysters produce pearls, ivory is highly prized as an artistic material, and tortoiseshell, made from a type of sea turtle’s shell, is often worth more than some gemstones.

But I had never heard of a rabbit producing a gemstone like this.

After some thought, I decided to test it. Using a small piece of industrial diamond, I scratched the surface of the red gemstone.

No marks appeared.

Mo-Mohs hardness of 11?!

Could this be another magical stone?!

I went out to the backyard and exposed the red gemstone to the resonant frequency of my voice.
The result was a thin, faint white beam, much weaker than what my Octa meteorite could produce, but a beam nonetheless.

It’s a magic stone! It’s not just one—it’s not just Octa meteorite!

My heart raced at this unexpected discovery.

I had thought the Octa meteorite, carved from a meteorite, was unique.
But that wasn’t the case.

If that’s true, then…

I collected some of the electrical crystals that had fallen from the sky along with the rainstorm. These were tiny crystals, no bigger than beads.

I tried exposing them to the same resonant frequency, but there was no reaction.

Well, that makes sense. If the electrical crystals could emit beams, then the scattered crystals on the ground would’ve been firing beams randomly when I was playing with the magic staff.

Still, I had an idea.

Sitting at my workbench, I fixed one of the electrical crystals into place with my tools.

The tiny crystal, shaped like a snowflake, needed to be handled delicately to avoid breaking it.
Carefully and gently, I shaved it down into a spherical shape. It was painstaking work, as intricate as painting a design on a grain of rice.

Once I had achieved a rough sphere, I used polishing compound and my fingers to refine it into a perfectly smooth ball.

The result was a tiny, spherical electrical crystal that I would lose forever if I dropped it.

When I exposed this finished crystal to the resonant frequency of my voice, a weak, pitiful little white beam emerged, like a leak from a faulty pipe.

It worked.

A beam.

You’re a magic stone too?!

Well, is that so? Could it really be?

Now that I know the result, it actually feels quite reasonable.

The day the Octa meteorite fell into my backyard was the same day the electrical crystals spread across the world.
Thinking they’re unrelated would be absurd.

My inner geek burned with excitement.

Electrical crystals are everywhere. The material for magic staffs is practically overflowing.

With this, I could mass-produce magic staffs.

Amazing, absolutely amazing!

Wahahahaha! I am the world’s greatest magic stave craftsman—the Wand Maker!

I’ll make them! I’ll make them! Magic staffs galore! I’ll keep cranking them out!

…Not that I have anyone to sell them to.

Ah, if only online auctions were still up and running. I could sell genuine magic staffs and make a fortune. I’d be rich and fulfill my pride as a craftsman. It’d be perfect.

Oh well.

With this much material, I can finally try out all those different crafting techniques I had in mind but couldn’t test before.

Looks like I won’t be bored anytime soon.

A year had passed since the crystal disaster.

After surviving a harsh winter, I now found myself staring at an empty rice bin, a pile of used-up cans, and a completely depleted salt jar.

Survival is so hard! How did people in the Stone Age even manage to live on just hunting and gathering?
Honestly, I have a new level of respect for them.

A year of this forced survival lifestyle had significantly improved my survival skills.

I’d learned to hide my traps better and set them up more effectively so they wouldn’t fail. I could now time my movements perfectly when fishing, and I’d reinforced the fence around my backyard garden to keep it safe from pests and wild animals.

Even my magic staff beam-aiming skills had improved.

As long as the target didn’t move, I could hit it with pinpoint accuracy within a 30-meter range.

That said, when I ran into a starving bear that had failed to hibernate during the winter, I almost peed myself. But somehow, I managed to drive it away by hitting it with five or six beam shots.

That was intense. If I hadn’t had the magic stave, I definitely would’ve been killed.

Though my life had stabilized and I’d found ways to fend off danger, there was one problem I couldn’t overcome—food shortages.

I’d dug up and restored some abandoned farmland nearby, so I should be able to harvest rice in a few months by autumn.

Sure, it’s amateur work, but I’ve played rice-farming games, and I’ve read a guidebook on rice cultivation I found at the agricultural co-op. So, I’m hoping for a decent harvest.

But that doesn’t solve my immediate problem.

I still need to figure out how to get by for the next few months until the rice is ready.

No matter how much I rely on fishing, trapping, or hunting with the magic stave, it’s just not enough.

The staff is useful, but it can’t solve everything.

My reliable partner, Octa meteorite-chan, has been enshrined as the guardian deity of my home, and these days I carry a mass-produced magic staff with me instead.

This magic stave, nicknamed “Hendenshaw” and crafted using a new processing method from electrical crystals I collected during a winter trip to the Okutama Substation, is quite the performer.

The inspiration for this crafting method came from the red-gem rabbits.

The crystal disaster seems to have affected wildlife, as ever since I found the first red-gem rabbit, I’ve encountered animals with gemstones embedded in their foreheads, abdomens, chests, or arms.

These animals were truly “magical.”

There were deer that cloaked themselves in lightning and bolted away at incredible speeds with a cry, and raccoon dogs (tanuki) that froze me in place with a glare, escaping in the brief moment of paralysis.

Whenever they used magic, they let out a cry, so I suspect they were resonating their gemstones with their voices, much like how I resonate mine when using magic.

But I couldn’t observe the details. I never managed to capture any of these magic-wielding creatures. The only sample I’ve been able to obtain was from the red-gem rabbit.

Upon closely examining the red gemstone, I discovered it had a double-layered structure.

The gem consisted of two layers: an outer gemstone shell encasing a core.

When I polished the rabbit’s gemstone into a perfect sphere, I was amazed by its beam output, which far exceeded what its size suggested.

From prior data, I knew that beam power scales with the size of the magic stone.

But the red gemstone, no larger than a pinky nail, produced a beam equivalent to what a thumb-sized magic stone would normally generate.

I theorized that the secret to this high power lay in its double-layered structure and set out to test this hypothesis.

First, I took a larger electrical crystal, shaped it into a sphere, and cut it in half. I then hollowed out its interior, creating a spherical cavity, and inserted a smaller, perfectly fitted crystal sphere inside. After reassembling the shell and sealing it, the experiment was complete.

In theory, this should have increased the power, but it didn’t.

The staff could only produce the beam power of the inner core crystal.

Apparently, breaking a magic stone destroys its magic properties. My previous attempts to create a giant crystal by patching together small fragments had also failed. This approach was clearly a dead end.

That’s when I decided to take a “bottle ship” approach.

Instead of breaking the sphere, I drilled a tiny hole into it and used a hook tool to hollow out its interior, carving a smaller sphere inside without splitting the original.

Most people would find such a delicate process impossible.

But I’m incredibly dexterous. I won’t say it was effortless, but it wasn’t that difficult for me to carve out a smaller sphere inside a marble-sized one.

Once the gap between the inner and outer spheres was filled with resin, I successfully recreated the enhanced beam power of the rabbit crystal.

As an added bonus, the tiny hole I drilled to hollow out the interior became a beam outlet, improving the beam’s directional focus.

And so, I completed the general-purpose mass-produced magic staff, “Hendenshaw.”

Armed with this Hendenshaw, I plan to descend the mountain and venture into the city.

There, I’ll gather supplies like food and medical goods and return!

I have no idea what the city center looks like now.

It might have turned into ruins, or perhaps a community of survivors has managed to maintain a stable way of life.

Either way, I can only hope I don’t run into anyone during my expedition.

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