Kays Translations

Chapter 61: Quantum-Style Magic Compression Cross-Ring

By the end of October, the migration of Class A monsters had fully concluded, leaving the skies and seas tranquil once more.

When the stoat, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, came to visit Okutama looking slightly worn out, I laid its small body on a blanket spread over the living room table and gently brushed it with a comb.

“You’ve had a long day, Professor.”

“Ahh…!”

For a moment, the Professor twisted its body, ticklish from the brushing, but soon enough, it melted into a blissful, drooling state.

I carefully combed from head to tail, then gave a light tickle under the chin. The stoat, now looking refreshed and rosy-cheeked, drifted into a deep sleep.

Heh. Back in middle school, I had the legendary “God Hand” that dominated the neighborhood cat gatherings. A tiny stoat like this doesn’t stand a chance against me…!

Hiyori, who had been casually drinking tea without asking, gulped as she saw the professor sprawled out on its back, belly up in an unguarded sleeping pose.

“M-maybe I should learn how to transform into a stoat too…”

“Oh? Want some grooming, you shameless woman? If you’re that desperate to have someone mess with your fur, how about I braid your hair instead?”

“That’ll do. Go ahead.”

I meant to tease her, but she obediently turned her back to me and offered her hair. Well, guess I have no choice. I started running the comb through her hair. Whatever happened to the saying, “A woman’s hair is her life”? She handed it over way too easily.

That said, this customer has some fine hair. Despite the battle-worn history that suggests it’s been soaked in blood, it’s well cared for—luxuriously smooth and shiny. Impressive.

“Ohh, you’re surprisingly good at this. But wait… This isn’t just about skill, is it? You’re acting way too familiar with a woman’s hair… Hey, Dairi, have you had a girlfriend before?!”

“Not in a million years! Never had one! I have a sister. Now that I think about it, the only time I got praised by her was for my skill at taking care of her hair after a bath.”

Well, I’ve never praised her either, so I guess we’re even.

“Oh, just family, huh…”

“I might’ve mentioned this before, but I’m estranged from my family. So don’t dig too deep into it. Anyway, any hairstyle requests?”

“Hmm… Just tie it up however you like. As long as it won’t get in the way when I move around a lot.”

“Got it, leave it to me.”

Hiyori’s hair was top-tier—so well-kept that I treated it with the same careful precision I would when handling a massive gemstone.

At first, she relaxed and let her shoulders go slack, but after a while, she got a little bored and started making conversation.

“Both Kei-chan and I were busy in October, so we didn’t get a chance to visit much. How’s Okutama been?”

“I was making staffs for this year’s university graduates and designing Gremlin puzzles for Fuyou’s educational training. Other than that, the only notable thing was seeing Class A monsters flying away during the ‘migration.’ Okutama itself stayed peaceful, but I’ve heard things were rough elsewhere.”

The Tokyo Witches’ Assembly managed to endure the peak of the Class A monsters abnormalities, their migration, and its conclusion with almost no casualties.

There was a real possibility that Tokyo could have collapsed under the overwhelming strain, but they pulled through with only a handful of permanently disabled magicians and a few dozen minor-to-serious injuries. That’s pretty impressive. I was just crafting wands out in the countryside, so I only know how intense the battles were from second-hand reports.

No doubt, the magic stone staff I made and the university’s magic training methods, which raised the overall standard of magicians, played a key role.

We also sent magic stone staffs to the Lake Biwa Accord, and it seems they managed to survive the turmoil as well.

Well, to be precise, they had to abandon 30% of their former territory, shrinking their defensive perimeter to make it work. So rather than saying they “survived,” it’s more accurate to say they “weren’t completely destroyed.”

Considering they were already in disarray after getting wrecked by the Aratake Syndicate’s internal interference, they did well just to hold on.

Originally, the Lake Biwa Accord had an internal divide between hawkish and dovish factions among their witches and wizards, but when they were hit with the double crisis of the Aratake Syndicate and the Class A monster upheaval, they were forced to unite. Though some tensions remain, their internal strife has lessened. Proof of this came in the form of an official request for economic integration into the Tokyo Witches’ Assembly, signed by all major Lake Biwa Accord members.

Professor Ohinata was exhausted because he had been attending expert discussions on economic expansion for days. Seriously, props to her. If I had to participate, I would’ve ended up in the emergency room with a stomach ulcer six hours before the first meeting.

Meanwhile, in Kyushu—formerly controlled by the Aratake Syndicate—40,000 people in Fukuoka City were left stranded without protection. Two surviving wizards from a small-scale community managed to join forces with a witch who had barely escaped from Okinawa after losing to Class A monsters. Together, they barely held out with 40,000 survivors.

Fukuoka’s population, once 400,000, had dropped to one-tenth of that. They avoided complete annihilation, but Kyushu was effectively crippled.

The Tohoku Hunting Guild countered the time-acceleration abilities of the Class A monsters using sealing bullets and magic traps. By working in coordinated teams to take down one creature at a time, they survived without a single casualty.

The very fact that “nothing noteworthy happened” is noteworthy in itself. The Tohoku Hunting Guild remains rock-solid even in emergencies, though their region always seems like a harsh place to live.

Hokkaido’s Monster Ranch remained stable—until the very end.

Hokkaido is known for training and using magical creatures. The “Mountain Bear,” which was once a rampaging Class A-2 monster, is particularly famous. Aside from Mountain Bears, several other Class A monsters have also been tamed for use.

However, the abnormalities affected both wild and tamed monsters alike.

When the migration began, even the tamed monsters attempted to head east all at once. Communication with them was completely lost, and some vanished over the ocean.

Even their strongest weapon, the Mountain Bear, almost defected. Three magicians barely managed to hold it down while a witch gambled on removing what they suspected was the cause—a Black Gremlin.

The moment they extracted it, the Mountain Bear stopped migrating and returned to normal.

This was an intriguing phenomenon.

After gathering information from various regions, the Department of Monster Studies concluded that the migration was caused by the dominance of Black Gremlins.

Class A Monsters originally had no Black Gremlins.

At some point, they began generating them inside their bodies. These Black Gremlins grew over time, increasing in size and enhancing their hosts’ time-acceleration abilities.

Once the Black Gremlin surpassed the size of the creature’s original Gremlin, the host became singularly obsessed with heading east.

By mapping the migration data from Hokkaido to Kyushu onto a globe, all paths converged on a single location: Idaho, USA.

We have no idea what’s in Idaho, but if even China’s Class A monsters migrated eastward, it’s likely that monsters worldwide are converging there.

Idaho is probably a living hell right now.

America is screwed.

Japan has taken a breather now that the Class A monsters have disappeared across the board, but it’s not something to be taken lightly.

If Japan had been the gathering place for the Class A monsters, the country would have been finished.

The Blue Witch can even instant-kill Class A1 monsters, but that instant kill comes at the cost of expending all of her magic power. If multiple Class A1 monsters appeared at once, even the strongest witch would be at a disadvantage.

If the Class A monsters gathering in Idaho decided to go on a world tour, the whole planet would be in danger.

The situation with the Class A monsters has settled for now. However, the crisis is still ongoing in a distant foreign land.

There is talk of sending an investigation team to America, but crossing the Pacific Ocean to another continent is no simple matter.

While it is important to look outward, the prevailing opinion is that Japan should first secure its own footing.

With the disappearance of Class A monsters from Japan, the most dangerous threats remaining are Class B1 at best.

This is a golden opportunity to push back humanity’s ever-diminishing sphere of survival and reclaim lost territory.

However, merely taking back the land from the monsters roaming freely within it is meaningless if it cannot be continuously maintained. Maintaining control over the land generally requires witches or wizards, but Minato Ward has set a remarkable precedent as an exception.

By establishing a watchtower in the center of the territory, stationing ritual magic units to perform death curses, and deploying well-trained sorcerers armed with powerful staffs to patrol, sustained control of the land becomes possible.

Moreover, through magical power training, the overall capacity of the death curse units is increasing, raising hopes that they may eventually be able to exterminate Class A monsters via curses or other grand magic.

The problem is the difficulty of manufacturing the crucial ritual magic tools.

These tools must be carved from a single, massive Gremlin, ensuring that each core is exactly the same shape. The thirteen ritual magic tools used in Minato Ward were crafted from an 80mm Class A1 Gremlin.

Such enormous Gremlins are incredibly rare.

Even if they wanted to craft more ritual magic tools, they simply lack the necessary materials.

If they lower the standard to Class A2 Gremlins, the available size shrinks drastically to around 40mm.

A 40mm Gremlin can still be used to craft ritual tools, but due to the size constraints, they would only yield three to four tools at most—far from the ideal thirteen.

The advantage of these tools is that they distribute magic power consumption among the users. If thirteen sorcerers with 100K magic each work together using the thirteen tools, they can cast a large-scale spell requiring 1300K magic.

However, with only four tools, the limit is 400K. While this is an extraordinary amount of magic by normal standards, it is hardly reassuring when facing threats like Class B1 or Class A3 monsters.

Though Class A monsters have temporarily disappeared from Japan, given enough time, new ones will emerge as animals mutate once again.

That is why Japan must reclaim its territory before that happens.

To reclaim land, ritual magic tools are essential.

But the materials for those tools are missing.

And so, Japan finds itself in a difficult predicament.

As the conversation went on, Hiyori grew drowsy while absentmindedly playing with her hair and eventually fell asleep.

Finishing by pinning up her long hair with a barrette he had made along the way, he draped a blanket over the peacefully sleeping Hiyori in her chair.

Then, making sure not to wake the resting women, he silently picked up the research materials on Gremlin engineering that Professor Ōhinata had brought as a souvenir and headed to the workshop.

Now, now.

My latest creation, the Sage’s Staff, had been poorly received, while the magic ruler was well-liked but boring and tedious to produce.

It was time to come up with something new and exciting.

To gather inspiration, I had asked Professor Ōhinata to bring research materials from the Gremlin Engineering Department, and they contained some intriguing studies.

In addition to known fields like melting and resolidification or amulet research, there were also studies on the properties of magic stones.

Some entirely new research projects included developing Gremlins as substitutes for electrical circuits, harnessing them as energy sources, and extracting electricity from them.

None had produced any remarkable results yet, but considering that magic power training led to a groundbreaking discovery after years of stagnation, there was still room for hope.

Even if extensive research ultimately concludes that “this field has no future,” that itself would be a major achievement—because it means no more resources need to be wasted on it.

The research materials from the Gremlin Engineering Department were all fascinating.

After skimming through everything, the one that caught my eye the most was something that wasn’t even a fully developed theory—just a rough idea scribbled down: “Gremlin Chain.”

The concept’s originator was Professor Waldifried Quant, the successor to Professor Hanada. His name sounded ridiculously cool—he had to be German, right?

Professor Quant seemed to have a deep understanding of geometry and woodworking, frequently incorporating those fields into his ideas. The Gremlin Chain was essentially a Gremlin version of a wooden chain carving.

Chains are usually made of metal or plastic. Individual rings are crafted and then linked together, so they always have seams.

But a wooden chain carving is different. It has no seams—the entire chain is carved from a single block of wood, with all the rings already interlocked from the start.

So, what would happen if you made such a chain out of Gremlin material? That was the idea behind the “Gremlin Chain.”

Excited, I flipped the page to see the details—only to find it blank. Seriously? He really just jotted this down as a passing thought.

Well, fair enough. Wooden chain carving is already difficult, and doing it with Gremlin material—a notoriously hard-to-process substance—would be even more challenging. A university probably wouldn’t have the means to create one.

But you know what? I can totally make this.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a roundabout way of saying, “If we pass this half-baked idea along to Professor Ohinata, maybe 0933 will take an interest and try it out for us.” But I was more than happy to take the bait—it sounded too fun to pass up.

So, I grabbed one of the 40mm Gremlins from my stock and carved out a Gremlin Chain with 3mm ring diameter and 100mm length.

When I held one end and let it dangle, it swayed in the air with a pleasant jingling sound.

Hmm. This could work as a stylish accessory chain. It was sleek and beautiful. And probably something only I could make.

Next, I decided to test it with magic.

Multi-layer structures amplified power, fractals enabled spell storage with reduced strength, and Möbius loops maintained power levels while adding luminescence and resonance.

What about chains?

Just in case, I took cover behind my workbench before casting a spell on the Gremlin Chain resting on top.

“Fire, Aaaaaah!”

The Gremlin Chain was immediately enveloped in white light, floated into the air, and smacked against the ceiling.

Whoa!? It floated! Something was happening!

Looking up, I saw the chain stuck to the ceiling, still glowing white.

Was it generating continuous lift? Anti-gravity, maybe?

The white light was the same as the beam from “Fire, Aaaaaah!”—was the spell enchanted onto it? But that spell didn’t have any floating effects… What was going on?

I grabbed a stepladder and pulled the chain off the ceiling. It offered slight resistance but came off easily. However, the moment I let go, it floated back up and reattached itself.

Hmm. The lift wasn’t that strong—far weaker than, say, a foam board submerged in water.

I attached small weights to the chain with a string and found that it stopped floating with about 100g attached.

Then, I cut the 100mm Gremlin Chain down to 10mm. The glow and lift vanished. But when I cast the spell again, it glowed white and floated just like before. This time, it lost lift at around 10g.

So, it seemed that each millimeter of the chain generated about +1g of lift, including its own weight.

Next, I tried “Freeze, Vaaaah!” on it.

Again, it floated. The lift was the same as “Fire, Aaaaaah!”—about +1g per millimeter.

However, instead of glowing white, it emitted a bluish-white light. When I touched it, it felt slightly cold.

Aha. So, the effect was enchantment + floating?

After observing for a while, I noticed that the floating and glowing effects faded after about five minutes.

For “Fire, Aaaaaah!” it lasted just over a minute.

It seemed that for every 1K of magic power consumed, the chain would float for about 70 to 80 seconds.

As I continued experimenting with my new toy, lost in curiosity, I heard footsteps approaching. A clearly groggy Hiyori peeked into the workshop.

“Hey, Dairi… my hair—wait, what the hell is that? What did you make this time? Another one of your incomprehensible artifacts?”

“Perfect timing. Take a look at this, Hiyori. What do you think about the way the magic flows?”

“Hmm? This is… oh, a chain? What a weird thing to make. But the magic flow is even weirder.”

Hiyori took the chain from me and immediately fell silent.

Then, without a word or any visible spellcasting, the Gremlin Chain started floating and sinking on its own. It wasn’t glowing either.

What!? Was she controlling it without chanting? Telekinesis!?

Hiyori played with the chain for a while, making it rise and fall as if it were alive. Eventually, she nodded and handed it back to me.

“When you inject magic, it generates a force field. I don’t quite understand the floating effect, but based on the ratio of injected magic to the observed effects, the lift is just a side effect. The force field is the main feature.”

“A magic force field… like an amulet?”

“No, it’s a different kind of field. From here, it’s like…”

Hiyori traced a spiral in the air around the chain with her finger but quickly gave up on explaining.

“I can’t explain it to you since you can’t control magic. But if I had to describe it… uh… it’s like magic and spells get pulled in and then repelled away?”

“?????”

I had no idea what she was talking about. That wasn’t an explanation at all. Well, I guess she did say it couldn’t be explained.

Hiyori seemed frustrated trying to explain but then connected the chain’s ends into a loop.

“Dairi, put your hand inside this loop.”

“Okay. Whoa? What is this weird feeling?”

“You can sense it, right? There’s both a physical force field and a magic force field concentrated in the center of the ring.”

My hand inside the loop felt a strange tingling sensation. It was like an invisible pressure pushing toward the center. Like forcing your hand into a block of rubber—compressed, but not painfully so.

“And… Hmm, no, this is dangerous here. Let’s go to the backyard.”

“Huh? There’s more to this?”

Hiyori pushed me outside. Holding the looped Gremlin Chain in one hand, she aimed it toward a tree and chanted a spell.

“Frozen Javelin, Du Vaala!”

It was the usual ice spear spell.

But the result was completely different.

Instead of a massive spear of ice, a tiny, ballpoint pen-sized ice lance formed inside the loop.

Then, in a flash, it burst apart with a sharp crack, leaving a gaping hole in the tree trunk. In the distance, I heard the sound of a tree falling.

I was shocked, but so was Hiyori.

Why were you surprised? Explain!

“Well, I figured something like this would happen, but I didn’t expect it to be this extreme. To put it simply, this chain loop acts as a magic compression device.”

“Oh…! How is that different from just amplifying power?”

“You saw the lance, right? The magic cost didn’t change. The power… well, the result changed, but the spell wasn’t amplified. It was simply compressed into a smaller form, which also increased its initial velocity.”

Hiyori demonstrated with another spell, and it was obvious.

A wide-area magic spell that normally spread out like a fan was transformed into a focused beam.

“Haha, I get it now! It turns area magic into single-target magic. And single-target magic into piercing shots!”

“That’s about right.”

So this thing was strong.

I rushed back to the workshop, driven by passion and overflowing ideas, carving out Gremlin Chains one after another.

I barely stopped to eat or sleep, only to be forcefully dragged to the dining table or bed by Hiyori and the professor.

By the time I finally felt satisfied, it was already mid-November. I had been obsessed for about two weeks.

The past two weeks were way too much fun. But it only felt like three days. That’s how enjoyable it was—and the results were huge.

I integrated my newly developed “Quant-Style Magic Compression Cross-Ring” system into Kyanos.

The system consisted of two interwoven Gremlin Chain Rings that wrapped around Kyanos’ core like Saturn’s rings. These rings compressed magic, limiting its area, shrinking its size, increasing its penetration power, and boosting its strength and projectile speed.

Since all it could do was compress, it wasn’t suited for expanding magic range or enlarging spells. However, if I wanted to cast a normal spell without compression, I could simply deactivate the rings and return Kyanos to its usual state.

My already-overpowered staff just got even stronger. The joy of stacking over-technology onto artifacts like this—nothing beats it. And I don’t have to hold back with Kyanos, since I know Hiyori will be able to wield it flawlessly.

Beyond Kyanos, the Quant-Style Magic Compression Rings could also be used to enhance standard magic staffs. Wrapping a staff’s core with the Gremlin Chain Rings provided an instant upgrade.

For ordinary magicians who couldn’t control magic freely, the activation process required two steps:

The first was to cast a spell using the Gremlin Chain to activate the compression rings and the second was to cast the actual spell they want to use

Even with this extra step, when Professor Ohninata tested it, she was so impressed she broke into a stoat dance. That’s how effective it was.

The evolution of magic staffs won’t stop here. With compression mode and normal mode switching freely, I look forward to seeing the world’s magicians unleash absolute chaos with this.

Previous chapter | TOC | Next chapter