Chapter 16 – The Monster Forest and Attack Magic
Things had been hectic for a while on account of Lady Martine’s visit, and at last ordinary life came back to us. So I decided to read the history materials Lord Frederick had lent me, and took them through to the living room.
The book was an account of the last several decades. They weight recent history heavily, then. I read on, and what I found was a rough stretch of it.
Up until a few decades ago this world was fighting a war on a very large scale. Then, around twenty years ago, the king of this Kingdom of Lathlasia annexed every nation that had designs on expanding its territory, concluded ceasefires with the rest, and brought the world to peace. For a time the mood was one of celebration. And then, almost immediately, the monster forest appeared. Now the knights stand against that instead, and hold back its advance. There is a great deal of detail in the book, but broadly, that is what it says.
What is the monster forest… For a start, there are monsters in this world? And if they are holding back its advance, that means it is spreading, doesn’t it? At what rate? And where is it, come to that?
There isn’t nearly enough here for me to work any of it out… I want to ask somebody who knows. The best-informed person I have access to would be Lord Frederick. He’s a knight, so he should have the current picture. I’ll ask him the next time I can get hold of him.
That was as far as I could take it, and there was nothing to be done about any of it now, so I shut the book on the vague uneasiness it had put in me and went to help set up for the dinner service.
Quiet days followed for a while after that. I thought up magic tools at Marcel’s, helped at home, went to the forest with Marie and Nikola and Luke, made the rounds of the food stalls, and studied the history book.
And the weather, which had been on the chilly side when I was first reincarnated here, turned hot enough that a long stretch outdoors became genuinely unpleasant.
All through those ordinary days, the monster forest stayed lodged in my head. I asked Marcel about it, and he knew nothing beyond what was in the book and had nothing current on it either. When Marcel was a student it does not seem to have been much of a problem yet.
I wanted to ask Lord Frederick, but I didn’t have the nerve to present myself at the ducal house uninvited, so all I could do was wait for him to come to us.
I spent a good many restless days like that, and at last Lord Frederick came into the restaurant.
“Welco… Lord Frederick! You’ve come at last!”
“What? Leon, what’s got into you? Did you need me for something?”
“There’s something in the history book I very much wanted to ask about, and you weren’t here, so I had no way of asking…”
“That was my fault, then. I’m sorry.”
Lord Frederick gave a wry sort of smile. Oh no… I’ve been wanting to ask about the monster forest for so long that I came out sounding as though I were blaming him. He’s under no obligation whatsoever to come and see me…
“I-I’m sorry! That came out with more force than I meant…”
“It’s quite all right. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. You’re right that you ought to have some way of reaching me.”
And he handed me a coin, a rather large one, with something like a crest cut into it.
“What is this?”
“Proof that you are connected to the ducal house. Show it to the gatekeeper and give your name and the name of whoever gave it to you, and they will let you in. Then you can leave a message with Alban, or anyone.”
Isn’t this a pretty big deal?! Am I allowed to have it? I’m a little scared just holding it…
“May I really accept something this important?”
“You may. Only take care not to lose it. I’ll have your name and description passed to the gatekeepers, so even if somebody else picked it up, they’d be very unlikely to get any use out of it.”
“I’ll be absolutely careful not to lose it!”
If there is one thing in the world I must not lose, this is it. It goes in the back of my purse and stays on me.
“Now then. What was it you wanted to ask?”
Which was the moment I realized I hadn’t shown Lord Frederick to a table yet!
“I-I’m so sorry! Please, take a seat first! Will you be having lunch?”
“Ah, thank you. Then I’ll take lunch first.”
By the time Lord Frederick had finished eating, the other customers had gone and the lunch service was over. Mom and Dad said we could use the restaurant, so the two of us stayed there to talk.
“So. Was there something you couldn’t follow?”
“Yes. I was reading the book and the monster forest caught my attention. What is the monster forest?”
“The monster forest…”
The moment I said the words, Lord Frederick’s face went hard. Then he looked down, as though assembling his thoughts, and after a while he spoke.
“The monster forest is not an ordinary forest. It is a forest that monsters live in, and the plant life in it is nothing like an ordinary forest’s.”
“Monsters? What are monsters?”
“Yes. A monster is an animal that can use magic. A weak one even an ordinary commoner can put down; a strong one takes several knights together. They’re a considerable nuisance.”
“Where is the monster forest?”
“At the eastern edge of this country. Two weeks by carriage from here, at least. Monsters will never reach the royal capital, so there’s no cause to worry.”
Animals that can use magic. That sounds terrifying… Lord Frederick says it’s far away and we’re fine, but are we really?
“The book said the knights are holding back the monster forest. Doesn’t that mean it’s spreading?”
“Well… it does spread, yes, but the knights cut the trees back and cull the monsters along its edge at regular intervals, so it’s all right. The force spreading it and the force holding it are about even.”
He said that, and put on a smile that had a faint smell of a lie about it. It would have fooled an ordinary child. It isn’t going to fool me. It might be that the force spreading it is the stronger of the two… and if it is, then the places where people live are being swallowed a piece at a time.
I want more information. But Lord Frederick doesn’t look likely to tell me any more, and there may be restrictions on it. A general panic would be its own disaster.
Except that if villages or towns are being swallowed, how are they concealing it? Move people out first with some plausible reason, then close the area off? Well. Nothing I can settle by thinking about it now… What it does mean is that this, too, is something I have to gather information on.
I don’t know whether there’s anything I can do. But I’ve got every attribute, so raw ability is the one thing I do have. For now, then: train hard, and make that ability count for something.
“Lord Frederick, thank you for explaining. If the knights are holding it back for us, then that’s a relief.”
I said it with a nice childish smile, the reassuring kind. Better to look as though I have noticed nothing. If this got taken as Lord Frederick letting something slip, it would land on him.
Even after he had gone, I went on turning the conversation over. So there are monsters here. I had thought there was very little in this world that could threaten anyone, so I have never once practiced attack magic. From now on I ought to.
I can use every attribute, so combining them might give me some genuinely strong attack magic. I should have picked up a way of defending myself long before this. Whenever I have the time, I’ll go into the forest alone and practice.
And my mana capacity grows the more I use it. Marcel said the capacity you are born with never changes, so that appears to be mine alone. Another strange ability I have no explanation for, but since I have it I had better make it work for me. All the more so now that I know what is out there. Magic practice in the forest, then. Let’s get to it!
I had got that far in my thinking when Marie’s voice arrived in my ear.
“Big Brother!”
I was so deep in it that being called made me jump clean out of my skin.
“Big Brother, what made you jump?”
“Nothing. Your voice just surprised me, that’s all.”
“Did it?”
Marie peered up into my face, puzzled.
“Yes, I’m fine. So what did you need?”
“Big Brother, did you forget?! Dad’s got things to do today, so we’re going shopping with Mom. We said this morning!”
“S-sorry! You did, didn’t you.”
I looked around, and Mom was standing there too, with the shopping basket in her hand.
“Leon, what are you doing lost in thought with a face like that? We’re going shopping.”
“R-right! Where’s the basket I’m carrying?”
“On the table.”
I grabbed it in a hurry and followed Mom and Marie out. I pushed everything I’d been thinking about into a back corner of my head, decided to concentrate on the shopping, and fell into step beside Mom.
A few days later, in the afternoon, I went out to the forest to practice magic. Not the fringe of it where I usually go with Marie and the others, but a little deeper in, an open patch near the river. Almost nobody comes out this far.
Now, where to start… I may as well get down what I actually know about magic. I crouched, found a fallen branch, and started scratching it out in the dirt.
Attributes first. Magic divides into six of them: fire, water, wind, earth, body strengthening and healing. Officially I am healing. In fact I can use all six.
Magic makes the phenomenon you picture happen, which means it cannot really be sorted into types. It changes with the strength of the image. But the range of magic available to you is fixed by your attribute, in that a water-attribute person cannot use fire magic. And as far as I know almost everyone says the name of a spell aloud when they cast, which supplements the image. You can cast perfectly well without saying anything, though.
The power of a spell rises with the amount of mana you put into it, which is why a person with little mana can only manage weak magic. But picturing the thing in fine detail cuts the mana cost enormously, so training the imagination should let even a low-capacity person manage something reasonably strong. Since I am working from knowledge I picked up in Japan, though, I don’t think anybody but me is doing that yet.
And mana capacity is fixed at birth, with me as the sole exception: the more I use, the more I have. More is better, so I may as well keep pushing it up while I’m at it.
That is about the whole of what I know. The image is what matters. So which spell should I practice first? If I am imagining a fight with a monster, then something with real offensive power. Fire, then. An arrow of fire. A Fire Arrow. That sounds cool! It ought to have more penetration than a Fireball, and hit harder. Let’s try it once.
I faced a large rock at the water’s edge, pictured an arrow of fire flying fast, and cast. One flew dead straight at the rock. Amazing! It worked!
Except that the arrow struck the rock and vanished. I looked at the rock: not a mark on it. Not enough power? I tried again, this time picturing it moving considerably faster. And again, not a mark.
Why not? It can’t be the speed. Was the rock simply too hard…? Ah! Of course. I have been thinking of fire as something without substance, so giving it any penetration may simply be impossible.
Hmm. What do I do about that. A Fireball has burning power but it would end the same way. Come to think of it, if I can use every attribute, shouldn’t I be able to combine them? Make an arrow of stone with earth magic, wrap it in flame, and send it off. That sounds ferociously strong.
Right. Earth magic for the arrow, fire magic wrapped around it. That was the plan, and making the arrow with earth magic turned out to be quite hard. Shaping it was fine; lifting it and driving it fast ate a great deal of mana. After a good deal of trial and error, picturing it as weightless was what worked best and cost least. And drawing the arrow out of actual earth, rather than conjuring the stone out of mana, cut the cost a great deal further.
Then I wrapped the arrow I had made in fire and sent it at the rock. As fast as I could manage it. Picture a bullet out of a gun.
Whump. Ohh, that made a good loud noise. Obviously more powerful than anything I’d managed so far. I looked at the rock and the point of the arrow was buried in it. Success! Success, but do I actually need to make anything but the point? It’s mana that drives it, so it doesn’t need to be arrow-shaped at all. And does it need the fire? Hmm. Then again, if it’s wrapped in fire the enemy might catch alight, which is damage the impact alone wouldn’t do. Keep the fire for now. The arrow shape can go.
I pictured something more like a slightly pointed bullet instead, made it out of earth, wrapped it in fire and sent it off. It sank into the rock about as deep as the last one and cost a great deal less mana.
Complete success! The tip really is all you need. This is going to be an extremely serviceable spell. What do I call it? Fire Arrow won’t do, since it isn’t an arrow any more… It’s a bullet, near enough. Fire Bullet, then! Yes. That sounds cool. Not that the name matters in the least. It’s a question of how it feels.
Next. Fire Bullet is single-target, so I should work out something with area. For area, wind? A Tornado! Let’s picture a smallish one and see.
That ate a great deal of mana for very little offensive power. It is genuinely hard to picture wind cutting something. I have never seen a whirlwind slice anything in my life. So what if I put the bullets from before inside the whirlwind?
What I got was an attack that shreds everything caught in it, indiscriminately, which is horrifying. I fed a reasonably thick branch into it and what came out the other side was splinters… W-well. Power is good, I suppose.
At any rate I have something strong now. It does eat a lot of mana. I’ll think of it as my finisher, for when things get really bad. The name… Rock Tornado.
After that I went on developing and drilling attack magic. Water Jet, from water magic: only enough force to scrape a little off the rock, but the low mana cost is the appeal. Fireball, from fire: I tried raising the temperature of the flame, so that the heat itself does the damage. Wall, from earth: heap the soil up into a barrier. The sturdier you make it the more it costs, so I can’t push the strength very far, but it should be useful for defense.
I turned out a great many spells that way. That is more than enough attack magic. If anything I may have overdone it, and looking around me rather confirmed it. The rock is cracked through from being hit so many times, and the trees look like the aftermath of a storm. Is this bad? Well, I did come a fair way into the forest, and nobody comes out this far. Probably.
More to the point, I want to try the attack magic on something real. I can hardly go to the monster forest, and I have been told this forest has ordinary animals in it, bears and boars and the like, so perhaps I should bring one down. I don’t like killing, even an animal. But if I have never done it, and I hesitate in front of a monster, and I am killed for hesitating… that is the worst of all the outcomes. I ought to have the experience.
I put the animal-warding bell away in my pocket, kept the river in sight so I would know my way back, and pushed deeper into the forest. About thirty minutes of walking, and I heard something moving in the undergrowth. I looked all around me and listened hard, ready for an animal to come from any direction.
A rustle.
Behind me! I spun around, and there was a pitch-black bear already charging. Oh crap. I put Build Up into my legs and threw myself sideways as hard as I could. Branches raked my arms and my legs, and there was no time to care about that. I got up and turned to face it.
Are bears this aggressive?! And it is enormous. If I had been a moment slower noticing it, that would have been very bad. Magic alone isn’t enough; I have to train my body as well. I was thinking that when the bear came at me again.
So I aimed a Fire Bullet at its head. The Fire Bullet passed just above the head, struck a tree behind it, and blew the trunk apart.
No good, I missed! Hitting a moving target is far harder than I expected. I threw myself sideways again to get clear. Then, to be certain of hitting it this time, I put a Fire Bullet into the body. It hit. The bullet buried itself somewhere around the right shoulder, and the wound didn’t look mortal. The fire had caught and the fur was starting to burn, and that wouldn’t kill it quickly either. This is bad. I may simply have made it angry.
The bear came at me again, furious now, and I threw a Rock Tornado at it in a hurry. When the tornado died away, what lay on the ground had presumably once been a bear.
Ugh… I think I’m going to be sick…
Rock Tornado really is too much. I am not using that again except in genuine danger.
Haaah. That was far too close. Now that the danger was actually past, the relief took my legs out from under me and I sat down where I was. I think I had been overrating myself, just because I can use magic. I need to practice putting the shots where I aim them, and I need to train my own body. From now on it’s magic practice and conditioning.
I had got that far when it hit me. What time is it? For that matter, is my watch broken?! I checked it in a panic, and the watch had survived. Thank goodness… but it’s already past five!
That’s bad! I have to be home inside the hour! I closed the scratches with Heal, cleaned my clothes up with Purification, and ran the whole way home. There wasn’t much left before the dinner service by the time I got there, but I made it.