Vol 5. Chapter 21: Asahi on Stage (1)
"What is magic!?"
With such force you could almost see the sound effect baaan hanging in the air, Asahi let out a shout.
"Asahi, lower your volume."
"Asahi, you’re loud."
On the stage, Asahi nodded vigorously, then waved her hand to bring up a slide.
"First, let’s go over the magical phenomena we’ve observed so far!"
Completely ignoring the heckling from the audience—and of course not lowering her volume even a little—Asahi continued.
"Asahi sure is energetic."
"Yes I am, Commander Sis-ter!!"
Displayed on the slide was the first threat creature: <Rain Croyne>.
"Now then! As you all know—well, I didn’t see it with my own eyes—but in that battle against that colossal threat creature, we received this world’s baptism!"
On the slide, footage from that battle played.
<Rain Croyne> sheathed in mysterious light, repelling shells.
"Ugh, I wish I’d been there!! I wanted to see it in person!"
"Asahi, try not to go too far off-topic. Continue."
At <Ringo>’s admonishment, Asahi regretfully switched to the next slide.
"<Rain Croyne> was a formidable enemy! This defensive membrane that unconditionally blocked every attack!"
Footage played of an armor-piercing round scoring a direct hit, only to be stopped by the defensive membrane and crumble to powder as it flowed in a liquid-like way.
"And this level of locomotion despite that massive body! Obviously, it ignores the physical laws we’re bound by! No matter what its material properties are, if you ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) swing a mass that heavy around at that speed, the joints will shear right off!"
<Rain Croyne> thrashed about, sending seawater flying. From its speed and estimated mass, the load on the joints would have been enough to easily destroy them even if they had used a structure manufactured by <The Tree>.
Yet <Rain Croyne> had rampaged around just fine.
"On top of that, we found that its output was far greater than the muscle strength calculated from the cross-sectional area of its biological muscle tissue! In other words, we can infer that <Rain Croyne> was using some means to reinforce its own biological structure and increase its muscle strength!"
The next slide showed that long-bodied ground worm.
"This is the nameless giant ground worm! It also exhibited a bizarre level of hardness! And when we examined its digestive organs, we got practically nothing useful—there’s no explanation for how it was able to grow so fat in such a barren wasteland!"
The footage showed the ground worm bursting up from the earth, drawing an arc in the air, then plunging cleanly back down into the ground.
"We have no idea how it manages to slip into the earth so cleanly like this! Sure, its head was hard, but at this level of speed, hitting this kind of ground, there is no way it could bore through! Normally it should just crush itself under its own weight!"
And indeed, that was exactly right. The site had been in the middle of a barren desert, with dried, hardened ground extending several meters down. It was mostly made up of volcanic rock; no matter how hard you struck it, there was no parameter under which living tissue could win. Under normal circumstances, the flesh would lose.
"Next, the monster hyenas that attacked us! For these as well, there was a discrepancy between the muscle strength we’d expect and their actual mobility!"
The monster hyenas that lived around East Gate City were also classified as threat creatures by <The Tree>—for exactly the reasons Asahi was giving.
Their locomotion was clearly superior; they could not be contained within the framework of a normal living organism.
"As for <Serqet>, since we never engaged it directly, the details are unknown, but at the very least, we couldn’t inflict so much as a scratch on it with a fuel–air bomb! And for a crustacean to support that size on land, its legs are far too thin!"
Crustaceans, which have to hold their muscle tissue inside their exoskeleton, are a poor fit for large body sizes. Since muscle strength is proportional to muscle cross-section, to scale up you need to thicken the limbs—but at the same time, the weight also increases, leading to terrible fuel efficiency. On top of that, to cover those thicker muscles, they need to wear even heavier shells.
Therefore, <Serqet> too was assumed to be embodying some kind of insane fantasy phenomenon.
"And finally, this silver dragon, the Wyvern! On top of the already known defensive membrane and physical augmentation, this one used a mysterious force to fly under acceleration, and even pulled off the stunt of converting impacts directly into acceleration! With our capabilities, that’s a technology we wouldn’t be able to realize for at least twenty years!"
So-called vector conversion—or inertia neutralization—was a technology they did have information on in their library. But actually implementing it required large equipment and rare compounds that could not be obtained on the surface, so <The Tree> in its current state was unable to manufacture it.
"And then there’s its sonic attack, and the Breath attack using charged particles! Because of course—when you say dragon, you mean Breath! There’s no room for doubt!!"
"Asahi, you’re loud."
"This Breath most likely works by taking air that has been super-pressurized and turned into plasma inside the oral cavity, then adding acceleration and firing it! There’s no organ that corresponds to a particle accelerator, so it’s truly unscientific fantasy!"
Rocking her body in a buoyant rhythm, Asahi advanced the slides.
Her sisters’ complaints went in one ear and out the other. She did not care in the slightest.
"Now, next up is the people who live in this land! Our sample set is the United Kingdom of Aphrasia and the Kingdom of Lepuitari, and while they don’t seem particularly proficient at magic..."
The slide showed a blazing mass of fire shooting out from the tip of an outstretched right hand.
It was training footage of the class of soldiers known as magic warriors, of which several existed in Telek Port City in the United Kingdom of Aphrasia.
"This skill allows an individual, by personal will, to manifest fire in a place where only air is observable, and then to project that fire mass forward! Furthermore, when it comes into contact with matter other than air—presumably matter above a certain mass—it explodes with a certain degree of power and scatters flames!"
The ball of fire flew almost in a straight line and struck the target set up ahead. With a crack of an explosion, it scattered fire.
The wooden target was scorched and charred on the surface by the flames, and when the scattered fire hit the ground around it, it flared briefly and blackened the surface of the earth.
It did not seem to have enough heat to make the target go up in flames, but a direct hit on a person would apparently be enough to cause severe burns over a wide area.
"And then we have these carrier birds used in the Kingdom of Lepuitari! The species doesn’t matter—just like carrier pigeons of old, they fly straight back to where they’re supposed to return to! Tireless, they fly on with almost no rest! It seems to be classified as a type of enhancement magic, and they can apparently keep flying for several days!"
Footage from a drone chasing a carrier bird appeared on the slide.
<The Tree> had not conducted its own experiments, but from interviews and observation of how they were used, they had apparently gathered a decent amount of data.
"Any kind of bird can be used, but since their innate flight ability takes precedence, the faster species seem to be better suited as carrier birds! The mechanism is utterly beyond me! It’s gloriously, delightfully, outrageously fantasy!!"
The next image to come up was a man in armor charging toward them with a sword.
"This is the knight who sliced apart one of our multi-legged tanks! The sword he’s holding is well-made, but in the end it’s only bronze! Whatever you say about sharpness, it falls completely short in terms of strength! If you slam it into the composite armor of a multi-legged tank, no matter how clean your blade angle is, it should only scratch the surface at best! There is no way it should be able to cut clean through like this!"
The multi-legged tank, far longer than the sword’s blade, was slashed cleanly in two. It was obvious that some kind of augmentation was enhancing the sword’s function as a weapon.
Asahi’s conclusion was that it was an energy blade whose blade length could be adjusted at will.
"Also, it doesn’t look like it’s melting its way through with heat—it’s physically slicing clean through, nice and neat! As if you’d pressed a properly pressurized monomolecular cutter against it! But if it really were a monomolecular cutter, its strength would be too low and it should lose out, so that means it has to be fantasy!!"
Smiling brightly, Asahi brought up an enlarged view of the cross-section and began to explain.
She was in her element, full of life.
Commander Sis-ter Eve was smiling too.
"And then we have the tools used by the locals! What we’ve secured so far are flamethrowers and stoves, but when you set this mysterious substance they call magic stones into them, fire shoots out of the tip!"
"Oh, right, we did have things like that."
"Yes we did, Commander Sis-ter!! And Fuelstone is a mysterious substance as well! When you apply pressure, it gives off heat, but it’s not actually burning, and there’s no ash or residue—it just vanishes clean away! Please obey conservation of mass!!"
The size of a Fuelstone, and the amount of heat that could be extracted from it.
According to strict measurements, the amount of heat that could be drawn out was apparently proportional to the square of its mass.
"This method of extracting heat makes no sense at all! If you cut a large chunk in half, the total heat output drops! Where did the energy go!? Or rather, where is the energy even coming from in the first place!? It’s truly, truly fascinating!"
Breathing hard, fired up, Asahi pushed the slides forward again.