Permanent Requests
With the Vice-Guildmaster and Guildmaster back, orders for karuta started coming in to the guild, and Samaniya Village was buzzing with a karuta boom.
Even the guild’s permanent requests now included things like:
There’s no time limit, but you have to bring them in as full sets. The work we do in class doesn’t earn points or money because it’s part of training.
However, if you make them at home instead of at the academy and bring them to the guild, they count for both points and pay.
Honestly, gathering medicinal herbs earns more points and money, but once karuta becomes popular enough that other villages start producing it too, this karuta boom won’t last forever.
So we decided to accept the permanent requests with the mindset of, “Let’s earn while the village can still earn!”
“Ya sure ’bout that? Yer points’ll stop addin’ up so easy…”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’ve already gone over 80 points, and if this keeps up, I’ll hit bronze rank and graduate from the academy, right?”
“… Already got that many saved up, huh? Then for a while, let’s use karuta board makin’ as practice for wood magic.”
That’s right, since more of the other kids started gathering Healing Herbs and Mana Herbs, I switched to gathering other herbs. Even with fewer bundles, I could still earn points, so I was earning 5 points four times a week.
Thanks to that, I was already up to 85 points. With just 15 more, I’d reach bronze rank.
I’ve been learning body techniques, and thanks to the athletic training my strength and stamina have improved a lot, but I still haven’t practiced fighting with weapons yet.
So I absolutely can’t graduate from the academy just yet.
And so, instead of gathering, I started doing daily work in the forest behind our house: using felling magic to cut branches, lowering them with vine magic, shaping square lumber with [Air Cutter], then polishing them into boards.
I used to mix Mana Herbs and Teary Herbs, Healing Herbs and Lighter Herbs for Ron and the others, but now they go to the village chief’s forest, so I disposed of the herbs I no longer needed.
I did keep a few of each in my Magic Bag, though, just in case they’re useful someday.
To use felling magic, you place your hand on the tree trunk and spread your mana thinly into it to look inside the tree.
The first time I did it, it felt just like looking at bones inside a body on an X-ray image.
“Dad, when you use this magic, you can see inside the tree, right? If you could do this on people too, doctors could see what’s wrong inside their bodies. Wouldn’t that be convenient?”
With X-rays, sometimes bones or buttons or metal parts get in the way and you can’t see clearly, but this magic lets you see the inside directly, so it feels even more accurate.
When I said that, Dad just froze with a blank look on his face.
“I’ve never thought ’bout that, but it’s probably not possible. Pushin’ mana into someone else causes rejection, I reckon. Even trees stop bein’ visible if ya force too much mana into ’em. It’s like mana overload, sometimes they even rot from it…”
Rotting sounds scary…
“Hm? So it’s dangerous if you push mana in a way that causes mana overload, right? But healing magic sends your mana into other people, and that’s fine. So if you keep it thin, wouldn’t it work?”
“… Ya’ve got a point. Might be worth askin’ the Vice-Guildmaster.”
It’s not something we can just test casually, so it became a Vice-Guildmaster matter.
Sorry for being the type who can’t leave something alone once I’m curious!
When I asked the Vice-Guildmaster over the weekend, he said he’d never tried it either, so his answer was that they’d first test it on defeated monsters.
“We’ll start by testing it on monsters that have already been subjugated. If that works, we’ll try it on living monsters.
If that’s successful too, I’d like to experiment on a person… The Guildmaster is sturdy, so he should manage somehow.”
I asked how they’d confirm it, and the answer wasn’t exactly reassuring, but I want to believe they won’t do anything reckless.
"Well, he does have a habit of pushin' things a mite when it comes to magic, but he'll likely be just fine… likely."
No, Dad, that’s exactly where I want you to say it confidently.
Still, even if sending mana into others is dangerous, what about sending it into yourself? I found myself thinking that.
I know, I know, I never learn. But if something catches your interest, you want to check it, right?
I knew Dad would worry if I asked him, so I decided to try it during my mana control practice before bed.
These days, the two of us practice mana control in lots of different ways. Some days we use leaves, other days clay figures, sometimes we test whether we can apply body enhancement to our entire bodies instead of barrier armor.
Today, I said I’d try body enhancement and lay down.
First, I focused on the mass of mana under my stomach, the place where mana seems to come from. I could feel something like warm water gently drifting there.
I lifted it up slowly toward my heart, imagining the mana flowing through my whole body just like blood.
As I felt a warmth different from body heat spreading through me, I thought, “I want to see.”
When you look inside a tree, you’re not actually seeing it with your eyes. The bark isn’t peeled back; it’s more like the image is transmitted into your mind.
So I didn’t need to physically look down at my body. Even while lying there, it felt like I was peering down at myself from above, like an out-of-body experience.
As I watched calmly, my body gradually became transparent.
Wow… I’ve seen anatomy exhibits and books with human body models before, so I’m fine, but it’s still pretty creepy.
I know that the Violet sleeping there is me, but looking at myself like this, I really do look like a perfectly made doll.
To my parents from this life, thank you for giving birth to me so cute!
The outer skin disappears, then the muscle layers, and the organs become clearly visible. At this point, it’s no different from a model diagram.
I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t be sure every organ is perfectly accurate, but it doesn’t look different from the illustrations I’ve seen, so I think it’s the same.
When I focused only on the flow of mana instead of the organs, I could see a vaguely glowing, bag-like mass covering the area around where I thought my lower abdomen was, around the large and small intestines.
From that bag, light shot through my whole body at high speed.
Mana was moving faster than I expected.
Well, I imagined it flowing like blood, so maybe my blood flow is just that fast.
After watching for a while, I felt satisfied. If doctors could safely and reliably do this, they’d probably be able to find what’s wrong inside a body.
Whether they could fix it is another question, though.
And then, after thinking that, another idea popped into my head.
(Could I use this to appraise myself?)
Crystals and guild cards can tell you attributes and mana capacity, right?
And the guild appraises medicinal herbs, right?
So if I can see my whole body like this, wouldn’t I be able to see my own, well, status-like information?
I stared at myself from above.
Of course, aside from seeing through myself, nothing else appeared. Just seeing raw muscle doesn’t tell you its strength or power.
Hmmm… how do they do appraisal anyway?
My thinking was starting to feel sluggish, so I knew I’d used too much mana. That’s normal when using a new kind of magic for the first time.
I’ll try appraisal another day.
Ah… I’m sleepy.
What do you think about this chapter?
