Chapter 150: The Druid’s Staff

Once we crossed the Hengduan Mountains, we were in India.

We underwent entry inspection at the border checkpoint and entered the country respectively as Transcendent, demon, and human.

It’s interesting how the entry and exit check items each country emphasizes differ. In Japan, perhaps because the magic staff industry is thriving, magic tool checks were strict, while at the continental gateway of the True Korean Republic, checks were generally sloppy. China was nervous about epidemic prevention, making it clear they took quite a beating from past Shadow Disease outbreaks.

Every country is different, every policy is different.

What first catches the eye when entering India from China is an enormous great river. A river of such scale that you might mistake it for a sea or lake stretches from the Hengduan Mountains to beyond the horizon. The scattered mid-river islands are also large, like small islands floating in a bay.

China was the same, but the nature of the continent is overwhelming in its bigness.

We descended this great river from upstream to downstream by steamship, and for the time being decided to stay one night in the town of Tinsukia in Assam State, India’s eastern gateway.

The white-walled houses hardened with plaster all had large windows, and good air circulation. From the gaps in the window lattices, plump pocket sparrows flew in with their utmost serious faces, then waddled out and took off again with sluggish heaviness.

They are loyal to their owners and hardworking, but their clumsiness is their fatal flaw.

What surprised me was the number of magical beasts. Despite being a town incomparably smaller than major cities like Tokyo or Wuhan, there were not only many pocket sparrows but also many tiger monsters like Dun.

As expected of what should be called the birthplace of tiger magical beasts, even a town at the country’s edge has a high adoption rate.

To the extent that you could see tigers carefully walking without shaking their backs while carrying children laughing and hanging in clusters like bells, I understood that Indians ride tigers in an extremely casual manner.

Well, tiger magical beasts are fairly intelligent and gentle. Despite their meat-eating appearance, they’re herbivore-centered omnivores. Even when Tsubaki pulls their whiskers, they only make pitiful crying sounds without getting angry at all.

As long as you don’t severely hurt them or force them to eat terribly bad food, they’re docile monsters.

After leaving our luggage at a small, clean inn decorated with vividly tropical flowers, we split into teams: Hiyori for replenishing travel supplies and gathering information, and Tsubaki and I heading to a staff shop.

I want to process Tsubaki’s Salamandra to version 2, but it was difficult to do during the Hengduan Mountains crossing. There are limits to modifications with just portable tools. Proper processing equipment is necessary. I’d be lucky if I could borrow such equipment at a staff shop.

After walking a bit through traffic filled with tigers and bicycles, the staff shop was easily found.

The sign of the compact shop had “Wand” and “যাদুৰ লাখুটি” written side by side. I can’t read what seems to be Hindi, but the English says “Wand.” Probably correct.

As I was hesitating to enter in front of the shop, Tsubaki caught a passerby with astonishing ease, chatted amiably, and extracted information like magic, reporting back to me.

“This is the only staff shop in town. No other shops. If you want to do something with staffs somewhere else, you have to wait for next week’s regular market.”

“O-oh. Amazing communication skills you have.”

“Mimi, amazing!”

Well, the reason I was hesitating to enter wasn’t because I was thinking about whether there were other shops, but because I was reminded of Hatobato.

I can’t easily forget the memory of bumping into that dangerous guy at the first shop I entered when entering the True Korean Republic.

When we entered the shop, a cool doorbell rang, and the lady shopkeeper, who had been tickling the chin of a winged cat on her lap, glanced over. Seeing Tsubaki with her burning body, her eyes widened and she tried to stand up, but gave up and sat back down because the winged cat on her lap braced itself.

“Welcome. I can’t move right now, so please look around as you like.”

“Yes…”

“M, thank you! I’m a good child, so I won’t burn the merchandise. Lady, please keep petting that child slowly.”

“Oh my, what a cute little demon. Want some candy?”

“You’ll give me a snack? Mimi, then oil would be nice.”

Tsubaki’s ultimate charm, quickly becoming friendly with the shopkeeper lady and starting a lively conversation—who does she take after? At least not me.

The shop can’t be called spacious by any means, and beyond the beaded curtain at the back, you can plainly see an open living space. It really feels like a small-scale retail staff shop. No matter how you look at it, there’s no processing equipment capable of improving Salamandra’s high-pressure high-temperature mechanism.

Can’t be helped. I’ll have to be satisfied with just looking at the shop’s selection.

…I checked if there were other customers in the shop, but there was no suspicious old gentleman. As expected.

Or rather, the boxes of what seem to be best-selling staffs are neatly stacked, but the upper shelves are dusty. This shop isn’t doing that well. That’s probably why there’s no one else besides us.

India is a monster industry country.

While China’s monster industry aims for gremlin production, India’s aims for riding monsters, pets, and meat production.

The magic staff industry isn’t very prosperous here.

However, precisely because the magic staff industry isn’t prosperous, there was interesting uniqueness.

Amazingly, this shop sells magic staffs in parts!

Separate from the properly packaged staffs in boxes, there’s a mountain of junk parts in a basket, with the cheapest items selling from 300 rupees.

Just the handle part with a backflow prevention mechanism installed, or an exposed reduction mechanism.

Just the core part with spherical processing.

What seems to be a natural two-layer structure gremlin raw stone. Staff grip anti-slip protection material.

Including staffs that are practically scrap with their cores completely cracked, they’re all jumbled together in a pile.

This is wild. Buy parts and assemble them yourself? What a sloppy way to sell! None of the specifications match and the parts don’t fit together.

This is an unthinkable way of selling for Japanese magic staff shops. Japan has used staff specialty shops for outdated models, but they don’t do such sloppy part selling.

However, I find myself getting a bit excited.

Picking out usable parts from these kinds of junk items by discerning eye, maintaining them to make them usable. Doing that to make your own original patched-together staff from a mountain of garbage has that treasure-hunting puzzle-like thrill.

It’s not something a craftsman does, but it’s fun in its own way. Reminds me of the early days of online auctions, when I’d scavenge discarded items, repair them, and list them. Nostalgic.

I got absorbed for a while scavenging through the mountain of magic staff junk parts, securing several gremlins with good quality for the price and feeling satisfied for the time being. Feels like I got a good deal.

Also, mandala patterns are frequently used as staff decoration designs, which gives a sense of culture. Chinese staffs had many thunder gate patterns, cloud patterns, and carved Chinese characters. Though there’s no difference in basic performance, it’s interesting how details differ by country.

Taking my eyes away from the junk mountain and turning to other merchandise.

The mountain of boxes with magic staffs stacked… isn’t very interesting.

Half are imports from Japanese staff makers I know. The other half are from unknown makers written in what seems to be Hindi? I opened several boxes and examined them, but there’s variation in core quality and the processing precision is rough, nothing worth looking at. Very mass-produced feel.

Moving my eyes next to the mountain of stacked boxes, spell collections are also stacked.

A reasonable selection. No matter how excellent a magic staff you buy, it’s useless if you don’t know any spells.

Even though basic spells are taught in compulsory education, you forget what you learned in school. I’ve long forgotten the classical Chinese and ancient texts I was made to memorize as a student.

Because accurately pronouncing magical language, which has a completely different pronunciation system from Earth languages, just by reading characters is difficult (not impossible if you patiently repeat trial and error), it’s best to have a proper teacher supervise pronunciation practice.

On the other hand, since you can’t always have a teacher who constantly holds your hand through everything, there’s steady demand for spell collections.

Also sold at this shop are abrasives, woodworking adhesives, dyes, and other maintenance and arrangement supplies.

And finally, in a small corner set up quietly in the shop’s corner, “Druid’s Staffs” are sold.

I knew of their existence, but this is my first time seeing the actual item.

Personally, I have resistance to calling these “magic staffs” or “wands.”

Strictly speaking, I think they’re “portable biotopes.”

I pick up a Druid’s staff and examine it closely, staring intently from end to end.

In overall appearance, it’s a form with a geode sphere attached to the end of a roughly 1-meter wooden handle.

This geode is a fist-sized stone with cracks made and the inside hollowed out. The inner cavity is packed with minerals that could be mistaken for crystals or agate, and super-small fluorescent-like creatures slowly blink light while floating and drifting inside.

It’s more beautiful in person than in the illustrations in papers. It has an indescribably fantastical natural beauty.

The sight of a crystal forest inside the staff’s core with small light-bearing creatures dancing is like a fantasy in the palm of your hand.

The principle of this staff is fundamentally different from other staffs, belonging more to the field of magical beast studies than gremlin engineering.

They cultivate mineral-type magical beasts that eat gremlins inside the core, and house fluorescent-type magical beasts that eat those mineral-type monsters. By doing so, they create a small, stable ecosystem inside the core.

And when the fluorescent-type monsters hear the cries of their natural enemy bird monsters, they use magic for self-defense.

Following the above principle, if you hold a Druid’s staff and imitate bird calls, you can fire magic from the cracks in the geode. The type of magic fired differs by the fluorescent species (blinding light, decoy illusions, foul odors, etc.).

The Druid’s staff is an interesting staff.

But this isn’t a staff manufactured and operated through processing and theory.

It’s closer to an insect cage for raising and feeding by maintaining the growth environment.

In appearance, it certainly looks like a staff.

It requires chanting (?), and it can use magic.

But you know, this is…

Is this really something that should be called a staff…?

I define Tsubaki’s small crust staff Salamandra as a staff too… no, but that’s still within the scope of gremlin engineering… is my head just rigid…?

Could this be a narrow-minded denial coming from the ugly jealousy of an old geezer who doesn’t want to acknowledge that a completely new type of staff was created in a place entirely unrelated to himself?

No, no, but you know. I really think the Druid’s staff is fundamentally a different thing from the magic staffs I manufacture.

“Dairi, they’re closing the shop now. You buying that?”

“Oh? Ah. Here’s my wallet, I’ll leave the checkout to you.”

“Mi.”

While I was deeply examining and thinking about the Druid’s staff, time had passed and it had grown dark outside.

Urged by Tsubaki, who had been given souvenirs with oil all over her mouth, I bought the bargain junk parts and one Druid’s staff, and left the shop.

The Druid’s staff is far too different in genre from the staffs I’ve made until now.

But the saga of a magic staff craftsman is that if it’s called a “staff,” it catches your attention.

Meeting it here is some kind of fate. I’ll thoroughly examine the actual item and accumulate knowledge that may or may not be useful.

Such various accumulated knowledge will surely someday bear great fruit.