Chapter 94: Snowsilver Swordsman (part one)
Magic Academy City Lindis was located in the center part of the Ichthyes continent.
It was a free city not belonging to any of the four royal houses, but culturally, it was also an old magic city strongly influenced by Hafan.
The Cratonneu River, which was flowing while meandering in the southern half of the city, made a confluence with the southern Alleska River.
The County of Wynt was also located where the Varnalis River flowed, which was about an hour travel by a horse-drawn carriage to the North.
Due to these navigability conditions of the rivers, it was also a land where trade had been prosperous since the olden days.
Its name during the time under Casketia’s rule seemed to be the Fourth Corpse City, Annwn1.
Even to this day, it seemed that this city still sealed the spell for resuscitating the dead deep underground.
A monastery was built to seal this dirty land and monastic dragon knights-in-training as well as mages were gathered here.
This monastery was the foundation of Lindis’ educational institution that continued to this day.
Originally, Lindis Magic Academy was an educational institution for Ignitia’s monastic dragon knights and Hafan’s mages.
For the monastic dragon knights, first the dormitory, the chapel, the large auditorium, and the large stables for their dragons were made.
In accordance with the demand of the mages, facilities such as magic library, phantom beast museum, magic botanical garden, and historical museum were added.
As time passed, Lindis became not only an educational institution for magic, but also for excellent talents in each field.
As for the subjects, healing arts, alchemy, fighting techniques, etc. were incorporated and young influential nobles gathered.
Eventually, the amount of students could no longer fit into the Central Dormitory where the monastery’s old school dormitory was refurbished, hence four dormitories were added.
Due to the abundance of human resources and the navigability of the rivers, other academic institutions began to build their headquarters and branches on the school premises.
Omnia Fluunt2 Alchemy Research Institute.
Lifthrasir3 Medical Association.
Essentia Magical Association.
Ignitia Royal Dragon Species Research Institute, etc.
Furthermore, companies from various places who wanted to be business partners with the above mentioned organizations gathered, resulting in the present situation.
It was the completion of a huge city which covered a great deal of the livelihood of not only the academy staff, but also officials and other people of the academic pursuits facilities.
In Hafan cultural sphere, which was originally exclusivistic, it was an exceptionally multi-ethnic and multi-cultured city.
That was a city called Lindis.
From the window of the carriage, I could see the cityscape of warm colors continue.
The stone walls were in beeswax color, and the stone tiles were gray.
Both stones were high-quality limestone found around Lindis.
Most of the buildings in the city, including the school buildings, were made of the same material stone.
There were figures of boys and girls of the same age as me purchasing class materials.
Surely, they had to be freshmen of Lindis, too.
Our carriage entered from the road along the Cratonneu River to the streets where the workshops were lining in a row.
When we turned at the corner, a conspicuously enormous golem workshop drew our attention.
Here was the place of interest, the alchemy street at Lindis, 〈Flask Street〉.
『Fumu. It has a different atmosphere from both Aurelia and Knot Reed. But, it still has a nostalgic smell.』
『So, Erica, which store sells an athanor?』
“Wait, I’m sure the shop recommended by Onii-sama was……”
Checking the signboards hanging at the stores, I entered the store where a golden athanor was drawn in a green tract of land.
Inside the tasteful shop which was small but clean, there was a shopkeeper who was a well-dressed gentleman.
He looked at me and seemed to know the gist of what I needed.
“Welcome. For students, we have exactly what you need.”
The shopkeeper arranged five kinds of small athanors on the counter with hands which appeared familiar with the task.
They were all about the size of a small water bottle.
While listening to the explanation of each kind, I picked each one up with my hand as I chose.
In the end, I decided to purchase the one made by the same workshop as the one who made my large athanor.
“Can I have this wrapped?”
“Certainly. Oh yeah, for freshmen, I will add three free crystal flasks.”
“Thank you very much.”
I received the purchased athanor and flasks and placed them inside the leather bag that Tirnanog held.
It was a portable Wunderkammer with space expansion.
When a lot of money was rolling in from the sea serpents subjugation, I thought it was a good opportunity to buy it.
It was different from the space expansion / weight reduction combined type that Eduart-oniisama had, so there was a limit to the amount that could be put inside.
Looking at my leather bag, the shopkeeper raised a brief exclamation voice.
“Space expansion magic, huh? Moreover, it’s the one with wonderful durability made by the Twr family.”
“Yes. There happened to be an opportunity to buy it……”
Spatially expanded magic tools were expensive without exception.
Those who personally owned them were either a wealthy person, a distinguished noble house, or a fortunate successor who inherited it from his ancestors.
Since it was too expensive, it was even said that it would be better to substitute with another magic of similar effect than to use space expansion magic.
In my possession, for example, glove of storing.
It was one of the new equipment developed by Harold.
This glove used compression magic, not expansion, and one could store wands inside which had been flattened.
And so it enabled me to take out the wands stored in the hidden pocket of each finger by focusing my thoughts on it.
“Please come again.”
As we went out of the store, the shopkeeper bowed deeply and saw us off.
It was a nice store.
I might as well come again if I need something necessary.
I thought so and went back to the Flask Street.
Our carriage before had left, so we needed to stop a new horse carriage on the way home.
Just as I raised my hand to stop the approaching carriage, a roar reverberated as if something exploded from behind.
Tirnanog took a stance to protect me quickly.
“What……?”
Looking back, part of the golem workshop building had collapsed and was emitting white smoke.
An accident?
When I looked closely beyond the white smoke, I saw a shadow of something huge, grey and beeswax colored wriggling out.
Something huge with a humanoid figure appeared from the emptied out hole of the building.
Ah, I felt like I understood what happened.
『Umu, is that a golem?』
『No way~ that huge thing? It looks like a gia~nt!』
“They made an error in writing the size configuration by adding an extra digit while creating it, huh? It’s a rare yet common accident.”
『It’s common but rare……?』
A size configuration mistake could easily occur due to trivial reasons such as the creator had poor handwriting or the creator hadn’t slept for few days.
It was a common mistake that even an experienced person sometimes made.
It would be good if that was the case as it did not cause the golem to move, but sometimes unfortunate coincidences overlapped.
If the power output was high or there was a mechanism that generated high heat in its surroundings, the size mistake would develop into the accidental destruction of the studio by the gigantic golem.
It was an accident that could be laughed off if it only ended there.
Things would be settled peacefully by making the person who made the mistake pay for the ceiling reparation from their wage.
That is, if no troublesome behavior patterns were incorporated into the golem.
Just as I thought so, the golem moved.
When the golem stood up, the walls of the workshop were absorbed in, and when it took a step forward, the stone pavement were peeled off and the exposed ground appeared.
After absorbing more stones, the golem was becoming more enlarged.
Its gait was slow but firm and it seemed to have some purpose.
Beyond the direction of its path, there was the harbor of the Cratonneu River.
If it took the shortest route, it would pass through several buildings on the Flask Street.
My bad feeling was confirmed.
Apparently, it seemed that detailed behavior patterns were already built in.
The golem slowly walked.
The carriages that were running on the Flask Street changed their directions rapidly and escaped at full speed, away from the golem.
Step.
The unfortunate carriage that had been parked was trampled down and the owner and his horses who were miraculously saved rushed away without dallying around.
Another step.
The streetlight made a loud noise as it was stepped on and turned into a crushed iron scrap.
Every time it walked, the golem absorbed more stones and got bigger.
People were trying to escape from the runaway golem so the street was already in chaos.
I couldn’t catch a carriage.
This might be more troublesome than I thought.
『Erica, what should we do?』
『Although we do not mind stopping it……』
Certainly, if I asked Tirnanog, it would be easy to stop the golem with his body and strength.
If I asked Palug, its core and power source could be destroyed in the blink of an eye.
However, both of them would be too conspicuous if they showed all their power in this busy street during daytime.
Even so, if I waited for the city guards to come, the city would get wrecked.
The shop which gave me flasks a little while ago would be destroyed.
This was troubling. Even though I intended to be a regular patron of that store.
Then, I should do a simple but effective maneuver.
“I will stop it. Is it okay if I ask both of you to protect the carriages and the crowds?”
As I said so, both of them nodded readily without complaint.
I felt a little happy when I thought that I was trusted by them.
Rather, if I couldn’t manage a situation of this degree alone, I would need to worry about my school life from here onward.
I checked my wands that I put inside the glove of storing and looked up at the golem.
1 Annwn (アンヌン) is the Otherworld in Welsh mythology. It was essentially a world of delights and eternal youth, where disease was absent and food was ever-abundant. (source)
2 Omnia Fluunt (latin) means all things flow.
3 Lifthrasir is one of the two humans foretold to survive the events of Ragnarok. (source)
And the gloves are called glove of storing with katakana. So, I can’t do anything about that even if it’s a little weird.
There are a few changes made this past week:
The series name became Shini Yasui Koshaku Reijo to Shichi-nin no Kikoshi.
Tour family became Twr family. Twr means tower in Welsh, same as Turm which means tower in German.
We changed the word ‘monster’ to ‘monstro’, since it is the term that was used by the author to describe both magical beasts and phantom beasts.
Also, I made a discord server for this series! Join the chat if you want, but please no spoilers since not everyone has read the raw ^^