Kays Translations

Chapter 16: Gremlin Melting Experiment

A top-tier craftsman, no matter the era, must be well-versed in materials science.

Carbon nanotubes, advanced chemical fibers, heat-resistant materials—these innovations have revolutionized not only the industrial world but also the realm of handcraft artisans.

In the past, blacksmiths set up their forges near mines or sources of iron sand to obtain quality metal, while carpenters understood the properties of different building materials and used them accordingly.
By mastering materials and using the best available, craftsmen elevated the quality of their various creations.

As for me, I claim the title of the world’s most dexterous man, but I must admit that my knowledge of materials science is only marginally above average. 

As the world’s one and only—and best—staff craftsman, I need to deeply understand not just the methods for processing materials like magic stones and gremlins but also their properties.

I can’t let my guard down even for a moment.
Even after creating Kyanos and Aleister, my path of improvement hasn’t ended.

Back when I made money selling anime merchandise on online auctions, I experienced having my work copied by others—apparently using 3D printers effectively—which ate into my market share.
Currently, there’s no other staff craftsman better than me.
But resting on my laurels would only allow latecomers to mimic my techniques, surpass me, and turn me into a punchline: “That guy used to be great, but he’s fallen off now, hasn’t he? Lol.”

While my dexterity isn’t something easily replicated, a breakthrough in technology could breathe new life into the precision machines now gathering dust, changing the playing field entirely.
I must never let my guard down.

A year after the abduction incident, I completed a reverberatory furnace in the hills behind my workshop and began the gremlin melting experiment.
Gremlins are a crucial, versatile, and relatively accessible material for staff cores. Deepening my understanding starts here.

I lit the furnace, operated the bellows with my foot to feed air into the fire, and reviewed my notes to refresh myself on the details of this experiment.

It’s a well-known fact that the larger a gremlin or magic stone, the greater its ability to amplify magic power.
However, naturally occurring gremlins max out at a diameter of 28mm. If you want a larger piece, you must create it artificially.

Simply shaving down multiple gremlins and fitting them together or connecting them with adhesives doesn’t work—they don’t count as a single piece.
So I thought: if I melt a large amount of gremlins at high heat, then cool and solidify them, wouldn’t that result in a single massive lump?
Gremlins are milky-white crystals resembling quartz, so it seemed logical that they could be melted in the same way.

However, this idea is hardly original. The Witch of Eternal Flame already attempted it long ago.
The Blue Witch, who participated in those experiments conducted shortly after the Gremlin Disaster, shared their results with me.

The experiments were a failure.
Gremlins didn’t melt with basic fire magic due to insufficient heat. And when the most powerful fire magic was used, they didn’t melt either—instead, they emitted violet lightning before disintegrating into dust.

From these results, researchers hypothesized that gremlins, which grow by absorbing electricity, store the electricity they absorb internally.
This led to energy extraction experiments, aiming to draw electricity from gremlins for use. However, these experiments ceased indefinitely when the research facilities, materials, and researchers in Minato Ward were lost.

The experimental results are intriguing but still failures.
Yet, failure is often the mother of success.

While the Minato Ward Gremlin Experiments were indefinitely halted due to the destruction of Minato Ward, the same destruction also revealed new truths.

Minato Ward was destroyed when a giant kaiju attacked.
The fires sparked by the kaiju’s destruction spread unchecked, reducing the area to ash.

Amid the burned wasteland of Minato Ward, solidified gremlins that had once melted under intense heat were discovered.

Gremlins, which should have disintegrated into dust when exposed to high heat, were found in melted and solidified states in the aftermath of the great fire.
I believe the reason lies in the difference between magic fire and natural fire.

For example, ice generated by the Blue Witch’s Great Glacier Magic cannot be melted by ordinary fire.
Only magic fire can melt it.

Even now, a year and a half after the kaiju’s death, efforts to thaw Hamura City—frozen entirely by Great Glacier Magic—are only about 50% complete, as the ice resists all non-magic attempts to melt it.

In magic, magic fire and natural fire are distinct phenomena that behave differently.

The Witch of Eternal Flame’s gremlin melting experiments were, of course, conducted using magic fire.
However, the great fire that engulfed Minato Ward was a natural fire.

I hypothesize that the intense heat from the natural fire melted the gremlins, which then solidified as the fire naturally extinguished and cooled.
This hypothesis warrants testing.

I first attempted to melt gremlins using a bonfire.
Predictably, this failed.

Bonfires typically reach temperatures of about 800°C, enough to melt lead but not copper or glass—and certainly not gremlins.  

If gremlins could be melted at such low temperatures, gremlin melting and synthesis techniques would have become widespread long ago.

In this post-apocalyptic world, where electricity is lost and survivors have long since exhausted gas and gasoline, generating heat higher than a bonfire is a challenge.
But this experiment is worth the effort. The results are uncertain, but the probability of success is high.

According to the data I obtained after sneaking into the fire department, temperatures during large-scale fires can reach a maximum of 1200°C.

If gremlins melt at 1200°C, this temperature can be achieved using a climbing kiln, often used in crafts. Building a climbing kiln is labor-intensive but not impossibly difficult.

However, I wanted a furnace capable of even higher temperatures—enough to melt iron. I’d used up all the scrap iron I had reinforcing the walls of my workshop, which had been destroyed by a dragon. Having a furnace that could melt iron at 1600°C would serve my future ironwork needs as well.

So, I decided to construct a reverberatory furnace, a sophisticated type of furnace capable of reaching such high temperatures without relying on electricity or gas.

The furnace required a large quantity of bricks, which I sourced with the help of the Blue Witch. She delivered bricks from garden centers and home improvement stores in Ōme and other areas. Additionally, she cast her “Maze Fog” spell over the Okutama region. This magic envelops a wide area in fog, disorienting intruders while allowing me to navigate unaffected. Impressively, she even ensured that the fog wouldn’t cover the rice paddies and fields, letting sunlight reach them. Her attention to detail saved me countless headaches—I could never manage such fine control with my own spells.

As thanks, I gave her a rare card once valued at 16,000 yen in card shops, though she didn’t seem particularly thrilled about it.

With her assistance, and using old reverberatory furnace blueprints I obtained through Ōhinata-sensei from the National Diet Library (along with an idol group fan book for unrelated reasons), I began constructing the furnace in the mountains behind my home. But partway through the project, I encountered a major issue.

I discovered that once a gremlin is melted down and solidified, it loses its functionality as a magic conduit.

This revelation came thanks to Ōhinata-sensei, who heard about my experiment through the Blue Witch, who becomes absurdly loose-lipped around Ōme locals. She sent me samples of gremlins melted and solidified during the fires in Minato Ward.

It all made sense now—this was why gremlin-melting experiments had been abandoned. Beyond the loss of research data, the experiments had produced underwhelming results. Melting and solidifying small gremlins into a larger one doesn’t result in a magic core but a mere milky-white crystal. No matter how much magic is cast near it, it remains inert—just a rock.

I was disheartened to learn the experiment would fail before I even began, but I managed to regain my footing by shifting my goals.

Instead, I began experimenting with dyeing gremlins.

While most gremlins are milky-white crystals that grow by absorbing electricity, monsters also possess gremlins. These gremlins differ in that they are often colored. For example, a red gremlin I once obtained came from a magic rabbit.

Functionally, colored gremlins are identical to their milky-white counterparts. However, the added color gives them an air of rarity and mystique, making them immensely appealing.

I suspected that melting and resolidifying gremlins might reveal the secret behind these colored variations. Could they be dyed with metal compounds like glass? Or do they require non-metal compounds? What happens if you mix a red gremlin with a milky-white one? There were plenty of experiments I could conduct using my new furnace.

Of course, learning how to dye gremlins has no immediate benefit. But that’s true of much foundational research—it may someday prove invaluable or remain forever useless. Regardless, accumulating intriguing, albeit impractical, knowledge is part of a craftsman’s material science expertise. A craftsman who knows such niche details exudes competence and charisma.

Unlike Ōhinata-sensei, whose work is constrained by the priorities of the Tokyo Witches’ Assembly and their funding, I am free to pursue whatever interests me. Being independent comes with its share of inconveniences and inefficiencies, but at times like this, I’m glad to be on my own.

I reread all my notes detailing the research and considerations so far, but the temperature in the reverberatory furnace still hadn’t reached the required level. I needed to keep working the bellows for another two hours to pump air into the furnace.

I kept stepping on the bellows, wiping sweat as I went. This is way harder than I expected—my back might give out.

After completing the tedious and exhausting labor, I finally confirmed two hours later that the gremlins packed into the crucible inside the furnace had melted into a viscous liquid. I then began gradually lowering the furnace’s temperature.

Gremlins have a crystalline structure, so I assumed that rapidly cooling them would cause cracks during solidification. Instead, I reduced the heat over time, extinguished the fire, sealed the furnace vents with soil, and waited a full day for the temperature to naturally drop.

After spending three hours lowering the intensity of the fire and extinguishing it, I was completely drained. I returned home to take a bath, my throat dry and my body smoky from the heat, sweat, and soot—what a mess.

Even throwing charcoal into the furnace to add fuel had been quietly grueling work.

Still, I felt good about the effort. Doing this kind of job regularly might help build muscle.

The reverberatory furnace, carefully crafted with an emphasis on design, operated smoothly without any issues and provided me with a wealth of experimental data.

In conclusion, the coloring of gremlins seems to be influenced by certain components in the blood of monsters. For instance, the three-legged crow hunted by the Blue Witch in Okutama had a pale green gremlin at the base of its beak. When the crow’s blood was boiled down and dried, the resulting components were mixed into molten gremlins, which turned pale green.

Repeating the same process with ordinary crow blood failed to produce any color, so it’s clear that some unique component in the blood of monsters is responsible for the coloring. (Using powdered bones or skin also failed to produce any color.)

As a side note to the coloring experiments, I discovered that using melted and resolidified gremlins as magic conduits significantly doubles the amount of magical power consumed. It’s a disadvantageous discovery.

It’s not entirely useless, though. If you made a prison with these gremlins, it might hinder prisoners from easily using magic. Maybe. Probably.

However, since it merely doubles magic consumption, someone with twice the magic power can still cast spells normally, so it’s not entirely reliable as an anti-magic measure.

Still, someday, this experimental data might prove useful. Maybe.

While the principle behind coloring gremlins doesn’t benefit my main work crafting magic staffs, it’s quite helpful for my side gig making accessories, so it’s not a total waste.

Meanwhile, as I busied myself building a reverberatory furnace and indulging in hobbyist research with little practical value for Japan’s recovery, reconstruction efforts in the cities continued under the leadership of the Tokyo Witches’ Assembly—sometimes cooperating, sometimes not.

Of all the stories about reconstruction I’ve heard through Ōhinata-sensei’s letters, the one that shocked me the most was the resumption of train service.

Granted, it wasn’t sleek metal trains but rather freight trains made by coupling low-powered charcoal vehicles, operating on about 25 kilometers of track repurposed from the old Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line. Even so, the return of public transportation reportedly brought immense hope to citizens. Ōhinata-sensei attended the opening ceremony and mentioned that the crowd was evenly split between those crying and those celebrating.

Honestly, it’s incredible. It’s one thing to understand it’s theoretically possible, but accomplishing it in such a short time, with limited resources and manpower, is truly impressive.

To think that only two and a half years after the gremlin disaster, freight trains are running again—it’s a testament to Japan’s technological prowess. Just as Tokyo rose from the ashes after World War II, I’m confident it will rise like a phoenix from the gremlin disaster as well.

The next major reconstruction effort, aside from train operations, is the ongoing promotion of abundance magic, which has progressed rapidly over the past year.

Mastery of the detour chant for abundance magic has become essential for survival. As a result, over 95% of Tokyo residents aged 12 and older have learned it.

Children under 11 are generally not taught it to avoid accidents such as improper use on crops, fainting due to magic depletion, or head injuries from falls. Exceptions are made for those admitted to magic universities, who are allowed to learn it regardless of age.

This year’s food production has reached 97% of the required amount, and projections estimate that with the expansion of farmland next year, the self-sufficiency rate will hit 102%.

It’s an astonishing improvement, especially considering that until last year, people were screaming, “Impossible! A famine hell is coming!”

But thinking about it calmly, the fact that even with a bug-like magic that can instantly more than double harvest yields, the self-sufficiency rate is only hovering around 100% is pretty alarming. Without magic, simple math says the self-sufficiency rate would be 50%. No wonder it would have been a nightmare scenario.

Even I, enjoying the life of a single bachelor in the countryside, found the doubled yields from my fields and paddies to be a massive help. For the people in urban areas who had been rationing their food, they must have been so overjoyed that they cried themselves dry.

As someone involved in technical work, I’m well aware that behind such remarkable recovery stories lie grueling efforts and seemingly impossible challenges.

I’ve been manufacturing and shipping mass-produced general-purpose magic staff for Tokyo Magic University, which recently began testing a one-year curriculum. In return, I’ve been prioritized for receiving hard-to-obtain goods and luxuries like sugar, soy sauce, miso, seafood, clothes, and more.

However, Ōhinata-sensei has it far tougher than I do. Not only does she teach as a professor, but she’s also working tirelessly to establish new departments and recruit talent, aiming to make Tokyo Magic University the hub of magic research. Apparently, my magic staff are quite effective as bait for talent recruitment as well.

While the source of the magic wands remains undisclosed, there’s a strong theory among the members of the Witches’ Assembly and knowledgeable figures in the administration that a wand maker is being sheltered in Ōme.

After all, the Blue Witch, who owns the over technology-level Blue Magic Wand Kyanos capable of nuclear bomb-scale power amplification, has a stronghold in Ōme with a robust defense system. Ōhinata-sensei, who possesses the bizarrely crafted Dodecahedral Fractal staff Aleister—clearly made by non-human hands—is also from Ōme and has strong connections with the Blue Witch.

There are even rumors that the Dragon Witch abducted a resident of Ōme and had her legs torn off by the Blue Witch.

It’d be foolish not to suspect Ōme at this point.

In reality, though, I’m just a carefree wand maker living in neighboring Okutama. Nobody would ever guess that I’m the mysterious wand maker in question.

Thanks to the Blue Witch and Ōhinata-sensei protecting my secrets and safety (and the Dragon Witch being threatened into silence by the Blue Witch), I’ve been able to enjoy my ideal solitary life in this post-apocalyptic world.

That said, I’ve been feeling dissatisfied lately regarding my staff-making progress.

Over the past year, I’ve been overly fixated on staff details, but there’s been no advancement in performance improvement or new functionality. I’ve been conducting some useless experiments here and there, but I can’t come up with any good ideas to evolve my wands. It feels like I’m in a slump.

At times like this, there’s nothing better than hearing reviews from the different people who bought the staff.

When I sent a letter to Professor Ōhinata, a heavy user of my staff, asking, “Do you have any requests for the kind of staff you’d like to have?” she replied with astonishing speed, sending back a very detailed list of demands for a magic staff with anti-magic reflux functionality.

The response was far more specific than I had imagined, which piqued my interest a great deal.

It seems that in the cutting-edge field of magic research and application, my staff are still lacking in some aspects.

This is great—this is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. A craftsman’s job is to respond to their customer’s “I want this!”

Alright then! The next staff I make will be an anti-magic reflux wand!

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