Chapter 42: Lei’s Study of Magic

I woke up in the morning and ate breakfast. I then go to the magic stone shop. Afterwards, I would eat lunch, and then take a nap. When I wake up, I go on hunts with the others. When we get back, we either ate at a restaurant or bought food to take home and then I would sleep for the night. During the last two days of the week, we would clean the first floor, which hadn’t been cleaned in forever. That was my daily routine.

The most exciting thing about my routine was whenever I’d receive a broken magic tool. Brendel had given me one because I was watching the counter so intently.

“This is a magic tool for light.”

The magic tool he’d given me was a large mesh basket crammed with moss and the box that came with it. I should’ve seen portable lights while we were travelling, but I didn’t notice at all because I was only looking at the magic stones.

“This moss lights up when you heat it up. Watch,” he said as he took a box that wasn’t broken with moss in it and turned the key. The moss started lighting up with a click.

“That’s how it works. When you attach a blue slate with a magic stone, it ignites the magic stone. That heat passes through the moss, which we use for light, and sand, which emits a lot of heat, and we can easily adjust the heat and light.”

“Aai.”

The other workers saw this and laughed.

“Bart and Alistair both talk to Lei as if she’s an adult. And now old man Brendel’s treating her like one too.”

“Uh huh. Honestly.”

Brendel had bent down while he was explaining all that to me, and when he stood up, he tilted his head as if he’d just realised what had happened.

“Lei was listening properly, unlike you guys.”

“Ahh, we got caught.”

Brendel watched and laughed as the workers rushed back to the counters and said, “You’ll be fine, you can take the broken slate to play with. And this box too. But you can’t eat it, ok?” before giving me the small box with the broken slate.

The box is just a box. But, when the key is clicked, the thin red slate shifts and the light blue slate and the magic stone come into direct contact. Then the magic in the magic stone flows into the blue slate and goes into the moss and sand. It was a simple mechanism. Anyone can probably make it if they know how it works.

“Yeah, like that. Even I can make it,” Bart said as if it was nothing.

“Buth there are onwy arthishansh in wingdom.”

I’m sure that’s what Bart said.

“Yup, that’s right. Well, anyone can make simple tools for heat and light if they know how to make it. But simple mechanisms don’t work for more complicated tools.”

What do you mean?

“Like the barrier box.”

Bart got the barrier box from Alistair and brought it back here, he opened up the top half of the box where the magic stone would be placed and showed it to me.

“This is also made in the same way, but the slates are different,” Bart pointed at the slates that were there.

“The barrier isn’t generated by heat. There’s a trick to this slate, but I have no idea what it is.”

So it’s like that?

“Wemme shee thhe wight magic thoowsh.”

“You want to see the box, not the magic stones? Well, alright,” Bart said, then he went to the second floor to get the light magic tool box from his room, and the light magic tool made for travelling. He came back and put them next to each other.

“This is the one I made, and this is made by Kingdom’s artisans.”

I see. I turned the key on the one Bart made. *CLICK*

“Brighth.”

“Obviously,” he said as if he was shocked. I put up with that and tried to channel my magic. I noticed that the magic in the magic stone was only flowing out a little. *CLICK* Ahh, that was really bright.

Next, I turned on the light magic tool made for travelling. The box and basket were small. *CLICK* Huh?

“Thhe mawic ish differenth.”

“Different?”

The magic was amplified through the blue slate, and the magic quality changed. This was the key.

It didn’t matter even if I said I understood it. This was just an interest of mine.

“Are you satisfied?”

“Aai! Thhanwsh.”

“Hm. Ask me if there’s something you don’t understand.”

“Aai.”

Everyone is kind.

But could magic be changed? That question remained in my mind. From the next day, I pretended to look at the magic tool box I’d gotten, and thought about magic. Bart told me that I shouldn’t let people know that I can fill magic stones, but he didn’t stop me from practicing magic.

Magic is channelled into magic stones and used to create heat and light, but what would happen if I use magic directly without channelling it into a magic stone?

I waited until no one was watching me and channelled my magic directly into the basket.

*BOWA*

I quickly looked at the counter and no one seemed to have noticed this.

“Ith with up…”

I can use the magic tools if I channel magic directly into it. Of course, I can create heat if I channel magic into the sand. But nothing would happen even if I said this could be done. Using magic stones is far easier. This is just for fun.

But once I’d found out how interesting this was, I got really curious about the barrier box. I removed the magic stone without permission and channelled my magic into the box. I was able to secretly confirm that a barrier was created. But why is there a change in the blue slate?

I thought and suddenly noticed. If the slates are altered, then wouldn’t I be able to do that too? I can feel the flow of magic, after all.

I don’t know why I thought that. But I have to try it now that I’ve thought of it.

I observed the barrier whenever the barrier box was used during hunts. It really is similar to projecting a thin layer of magic out of the body. But ordinary magic didn’t repel Hollows. I changed my magic quality to resemble that of a barrier so that it could repel the WHIRR vibrations. Every day I changed it little by little.

When I was finally able to change the quality of my magic to match that of the barrier, three weeks had already passed since I came to Lentforce.

And then finally, the mayor had summoned Bart and his crew, even though it seemed he was avoiding them for some reason.