Kays Translations

Chapter 75: What the Demon Lord War Brought

As I was making breakfast, Hiyori sluggishly got up, looking exhausted.

“Good morning.”

“…Good morning.”

She pouted, and when I gestured by covering my face with one hand, she reluctantly put on the mask hanging at her waist and stood next to me, peeking at the half-prepared breakfast.

“Sit down. It’ll be ready soon.”

“Should I take over?”

“I’m better at cooking, aren’t I?”

“…You let the Spider Witch cook for you, though.”

“What? You wanted to eat the Spider Witch’s homemade food? I can call her—”

“No, no! Stop. I want to eat your food, Dairi.”

“Thought so.”

Hiyori obediently took a seat at the table.

Cooking is all about heat control and seasoning. Since I can cut ingredients precisely to uniform sizes, they cook evenly without inconsistencies. My seasoning measurements are also perfectly accurate! Leave the cooking to me.

I served a breakfast of pickled summer vegetables, rolled omelets, sardine meatball soup, and white rice. Hiyori shifted her mask slightly to eat and devoured the food with gusto.

“Good?”

“Yeah. I could eat this every day.”

“They probably don’t serve much Japanese food in America, huh? Was it mostly bread over there?”

I took my seat, sipping the soup, and asked. Hiyori nodded and began sharing stories from her expedition.

The Black Ships, which had circumnavigated the globe via the western sea route, had gathered technology and personnel from all over the world.

Unfortunately, they didn’t discover any groundbreaking new technologies, but they did find many overlapping ones.

For example, in India, a special sauce similar in principle to one from the Northeastern Hunting Association was widespread. While the flavor and composition were slightly different, the basic function remained unchanged—when used to marinate monster meat, it made the meat edible by incorporating a mixture of monster stomach acids. However, in India, they added a special bile extracted from certain types of monsters. This gave the sauce a milder acidity and a faint sweetness, making the marinated meat more palatable.

India also had an ongoing debate regarding cattle. Since cows are sacred there, people constantly argued over whether mutated cow monsters were still considered cows, and whether eating their meat was permissible. According to Hiyori, though, Indian sauce tasted best when used to marinate cow monster meat. Sounds delicious.

Barcelona, Spain, had been crushed by a Category A monster outbreak and was in ruins. However, the survivors had preserved a technique similar to the Gremlin Implantation Technology used in Hokkaido’s Monster Farms.

That said, their implantation method was more advanced than Japan’s.

Their approach involved first implanting the gremlin into a person without allergies, then removing it and re-implanting it into someone with allergies to reduce the risk of adverse reactions. They also had methods to embed the implant deeper within internal organs instead of just the body’s surface, enhancing the connection with the monster.

Fascinating. I had already undergone implantation, so there wasn’t much I could do for myself, but for those yet to be implanted, these advancements could be extremely beneficial.

The Black Ship fleet had docked at over twenty countries.

Each nation was in a different state.

Some had managed to maintain civilization.

Others had been functioning until recently but were now rebuilding after being devastated by Category A monster outbreaks.

Some were mere remnants of former civilizations, with all human life wiped out.

Some nations had survived by crossing borders and forming alliances, while others had splintered due to internal conflicts.

There were settlements where only a handful of magicians beings lived, not even qualifying as villages.

There were human-only villages eking out an existence under the protection of powerful monsters that had no interest in humans.

The overall assessment?

The world’s level of technology and civilization was “decent.”

Japan and America were the two major powerhouses in both technology and population, with India trailing slightly behind.

The rest were scattered small communities.

That said, the Black Ships didn’t dock in every country. There were likely many unknown survivor communities out there.

One of the biggest accomplishments of the world tour wasn’t just gathering technology or personnel—it was the massive increase in magic chant samples.

Even in struggling communities that couldn’t spare manpower for the Demon Lord War because losing people would mean their own destruction, magic exchanges—where chants were shared—were widely practiced.

The Black Ships had gathered several useful spells.

For instance: A self-enhancement spell similar to blood magic, but without the need for a blood cost—though it had higher mana consumption. A lust magic spell that was originally used in certain regions to accelerate livestock and oil-producing plankton breeding. A fire spell with lower mana consumption than Gremlin Burn or Glacier Magic, though it lacked the former’s effectiveness against gremlins and the latter’s ability to melt ice.

Japan’s fertility magic had spread worldwide and was met with overwhelming joy everywhere.

That made sense—it consumed very little mana, could be used by ordinary people with detour chants, and could more than double agricultural yields with minimal effort. It was basically a cheat-level spell.

However, it might still fall short compared to the Vatican City’s healing magic, wielded by the Saint.

One of the heroes who defeated the Demon Lord, the Saint Lucia, possessed the healing magic humanity had always longed for.

The Saint’s miracles healed wounds, cured ailments, and at higher levels could even neutralize radiation damage and regenerate lost body parts.

It could detoxify poisons, cure cancer, and even reverse Alzheimer’s.

A monstrous recovery spell.

Of course, it couldn’t bring back the dead.

Humanity had lost electricity, causing medical advancements to regress drastically. Many lives were lost simply because adequate medical care was no longer available. If I had caught something worse than appendicitis, I would probably be dead.

Hiyori’s sister also died due to the collapse of medical infrastructure.

Healing magic would dramatically improve global healthcare—perhaps even surpassing pre-collapse medical capabilities.

However, healing magic wasn’t an all-powerful, invincible spell.

One major drawback was its high mana cost.

Even the cheapest spell, capable of curing hangovers and small cuts, consumed 17K mana—more than an ice lance spell.

That said, when combined with surgery, it could instantly repair torn blood vessels and provide emergency treatment for damaged organs, making 17K a reasonable price.

The second cheapest healing spell consumed 80K mana.

It was convenient for witches and mages, but for ordinary people, the cost was astronomical. Even in Japan, fewer than ten people could cast it.

At the highest level, healing magic consumed 4200K mana.

It was a supreme spell capable of instantly healing almost anything—as long as the person wasn’t dead.

The cost was insane. Even Hiyori, with her vast mana reserves, could only cast it twice in a row before being drained. Three times was impossible.

However, Saint Lucia had a racial affinity for healing magic, allowing her to cast all healing spells at 1/7th of the normal mana cost and adjust the spell’s range.

Ridiculous.

The title of “Saint” wasn’t just for show.

One of the remaining drawbacks is that all the incantations include unpronounceable sounds.

However, Japan’s proud professor of magic linguistics and president of Tokyo Magic University, Kei Ohinata, has already developed an alternative incantation for the lowest-cost healing magic.

An absolute genius…!

Seriously, that ermine professor deserves to be immortalized in human history. Allowing humanity to use both fertility magic and healing magic? That’s just insane.

Mana consumption is a bottleneck, so even though humanity’s average mana capacity has increased through training, the number of healing magic users likely won’t rise much.

Still, with the scrolls I developed, witches and wizards can stockpile powerful, high-cost healing magic for emergencies.

By combining it with other technologies, we can maximize healing magic’s potential.

Apparently, during the Demon King battle, my healing magic scrolls played a crucial role alongside my defensive magic attachments.

“Dairi’s scrolls saved at least ten American mutants, at the very least. If you count the magic staff, you could say they saved everyone’s lives. Be proud, Dairi—you saved the world.”

Hiyori said this with a smile as if it were her own achievement.

W-Wait, really? Did I… save the world?

I mean, I always considered myself the world’s greatest staff-maker, but apparently, I also saved the world.

…It doesn’t feel real at all!

While Hiyori and the hero’s party were duking it out with the Demon King, I was chilling in the countryside, studying magic inscriptions and performing surgery on mermaids.

And now they tell me, “You saved the world”? It doesn’t click at all. The only thing I saved was a mermaid. I mean, saving the world is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?

But if Hiyori says so, I guess I did. Not like I have any proof in front of me or anything.

Oh, right—speaking of proof of saving the world…

“What was the Demon King like? What were the drop items? And how was the Gremlin?”

I had crafted a ton of magic tools for the hero’s party and the U.S. military.

In return, I had a contract to receive materials from the Demon King.

So tell me, Hiyori—what was the Demon King like? What kind of items did you get?

“The Demon King, huh. It was a massive humanoid giant, pitch black, with horns and covered in writhing, slimy tendrils. It could use the magic of the witches and wizards it had absorbed, so it could technically talk… I guess? Even with four of us attacking, we never saw the bottom of its mana reserves. An absolute monster. I never want to fight something like that again.”

“Huh. With that much mana, was the Gremlin huge too?”

When I leaned forward eagerly, Hiyori scratched her head apologetically.

“Uh, sorry. I was unconscious when we defeated it, so I don’t know. But Conrad—the leader of the hero’s party—said that when it died, it coughed up all the witches, wizards, and magic stones it had absorbed. Plus, the shattered magic stones somehow reassembled themselves, and the heavily damaged witch corpses were completely restored. No one knows why. It was theorized that things absorbed by the Demon King might remain intact, but no one expected them to be repaired as well.”

“Huh…? I can see how the magic stones could piece back together—that’s already pretty insane—but even the corpses got restored…? Why?”

“No clue. America will probably investigate that part.”

“The Dragon Witch is supposed to return from America with a report summarizing the Demon King’s materials and their value after inspecting the mines she secured over there. I think we should return the witches and wizards’ bodies to America, but we’ll at least get several magic stones out of this. You can look forward to it.”

“Oh, that actually sounds pretty promising.”

There was a possibility that the Demon King’s corpse might disappear along with all the absorbed materials, like a black Gremlin, so this was very good news.

I don’t need a magician’s corpse, so I’ll just pick out the Demon King materials and magic stones (plus maybe a Demon King Gremlin?).

The only downside is that the Dragon Witch is the one bringing back the material list and valuation (she’ll definitely try to pocket some for herself), but if Hiyori pressures her, she’ll cough it up.

Now I’m getting excited.

I can’t wait for the Demon King materials to arrive!

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