88 Episode 87 Fire and Magic Stone

Fortunately, the sugared desk was cheap, and I had to replace it with a better one.

Perhaps I had underestimated the artifact, thinking it was just a tool for making sugar.

An artifact made from a magical stone that could be used for military purposes could not possibly be used only to make a small amount of sugar.

Even more frightening, the Sugar Wood Artifact was a magic artifact that could be used multiple times and filled with magic power.

It could be used to mass produce sugar and even demolish a wooden house with one tool.

It was worth spending three magic stones, but it was still a very cost-effective tool.

Judging from the fact that it can be filled with magic power, magic stones may have been valuable even in ancient civilizations.

At any rate, by preparing lumber and metal equipment suitable for the output of the magic tools, it became possible to produce sugar in a stable manner.

I never thought that the plan to mass produce sugar, which had been blocked by the Zunana grass, would be realized in this way, but as a result, Kaede Merchant Company would have a new main product.

The company had already grown so large that they could handle this and that related to sales without my involvement, so my job was as simple as filling the "wood sugarizer" with magic power from time to time.

Except for the research and development, I've been watching from the sidelines, providing only money and goods, but it's been fun to see the store grow like a management simulation.

While the sugar sales system was being set up, I received a request from the guild and came to the city of Soltin for a meeting about it.

A demon outbreak was finally going to happen.

It's about five days away from Fotoren (by carriage or other common means of transportation).

It was not a great distance for me, and it would not be a great distance for the adventurers returning from Decibatore who would be my reinforcements.

The meeting went smoothly, partly because of the small number of people present.

The following is a summary of what was told to me.

The fact that most of the area within the predicted outbreak zone (a radius of about 100 km) is just wilderness or mountainous terrain, with only a few small villages, makes matters easier.

There are several small and medium-sized cities in the vicinity, including Soltin, where the task force is located, but their guards and the residents of the villages have already been evacuated, so my job is to kill the demons before they get out of range and reduce their numbers to a point where the wizards guarding the towns can kill them.

Successfully completing this mission means that I'll be able to wipe out nearly 10,000 demons and monopolize their materials.

We will be able to get a lot of materials for artifacts.

After deciding on the scope of the mission, the meeting quickly ended. The details would be determined by each of us, and each of us would do our part.

The merchants and guild members would remain in the city, while the adventurers would move to their respective posts.

Do your best so that we don't have to do our jobs.

The adventurers who were leaving the city with their long anti-aircraft staves called out to me as I began to fly.

The adventurers running to their posts were faster than the average warrior, even for wizards, but they were ...... wizards who had originally been in Decibatore. This should come as no surprise.

There are still four to six hours before the predicted time of the demon's appearance, but the predictions have only been narrowed down to a 100 kilometer radius, so we need to find a place where the signs are appearing.

I accelerate, careful not to exceed the speed of sound, and look around in the sky.

I've been told that it's easy to tell when there's too much magic in the air because of the swirling black clouds.

I was right, and in less than thirty minutes, I found the black swirling clouds.

It was just outside the 100km radius, but thankfully there was nothing but a small village nearby.

In the meantime, I put up a warding spell to prevent damage to the village, and watched the cloud, waiting for the demon to appear.

While I was watching, the unnatural black clouds, which were different from normal cumulonimbus clouds, grew in size and blackness.

After about thirty minutes, when you have grown tired of watching the clouds, the horizontal expansion of the clouds ends and a strong downdraft begins to blow.

The clouds did not disappear in the downdraft, but rather began to expand downward, indicating that the clouds were not made of water vapor.

But there are still more than five hours to go before the monster appears.

Too much time.

I thought that it would be quicker if I just collected the magical elements like I did right after defeating the dragon, but I didn't want anything strange to happen.

I had no choice but to wait and process the large number of magic stones in my possession so that I could connect them.

One magic stone, two magic stones: ......

When I finished processing the 173rd magic stone, things finally started to move.

The black clouds that had covered the sky disappeared, and in their place, black flying demons covered the sky.

The demons seemed to appear in multiple waves, but there still seemed to be a thousand or two thousand of them.

Although there are many of them, the area where they appear is almost the same size as the clouds, so for the time being, I cover the area with warding magic.

You'll have to enclose dozens of cubic kilometers at once, but that's covered by the violence of MP.

Let's try to kill one of them.

I approach it at subsonic speed, swing my magic sword, and drop the head of a bird-like creature with large black wings.

When I dismantled it, I found out that the bird was carrying a large magic stone like the one I used in my experiment.

The magic stone is good, but the other materials seem to be of delicate quality.

It has an air of a cheap product made in Country C.

I guess it can't be helped if you think it was mass-produced in an instant using a strange black cloud as material.

After some thought, I decided to give up on the other materials and just collect the magic stones.

There's nothing wrong with collecting other materials as well, but even asking me to kill dozens of them in one go is like asking me to eat pudding with a shovel.

You might be able to get by with a shovel, but when you're dealing with thousands of them, the shovel ranks up there with a bucket wheel excavator. It's impossible.

Before I could even think about it, birds, dogs with wings, and other flying monsters were attacking me.

Just in time, I'll let you be my test subject.

I get a little distance from the demons, take out "Demon Suppression" from the item box, and activate it.

The next moment, the demons around me began to freeze and fall to the ground.

It's an excellent tool, as all of the demons within a hundred-meter radius have been wiped out, and the ones outside of the radius are flying funny and lowering their altitude.

However, it seems that the target was not only demons.

I'm using flight magic as if I'm maintaining altitude, but my altitude is dropping.

When I noticed this, I increased the power to maintain altitude, but I must have been affected myself.

This means that the theory that "magical element suppression" does not affect humans is a lie.

...... If you count me as a human, who probably has more magical elements than all the demons in this place combined.

I'm not sure if you've seen this before, but I'm sure you've.

There are so many of them, so you need to be able to destroy them, but you don't want to destroy the magic stones, so you use fire magic instead of explosion magic like you do in Decibatore.

I went out of the wards, poured millions of magic power into the wards, generated enough fire magic to fill the wards, and threw pebbles at them to detonate them.

The sky turns red.

The magic that focuses on heat and fire dyes the sky and even the ground inside and around the wards with red light.

Thanks to the wards, I can't feel the heat, but I can feel the wards consuming my magic power.

The current me would have no problem if it took 100 or 200 million of my magic power, but the old me would have dried up.

The flames burned for several tens of seconds and then disappeared, leaving a large amount of magic stones at the bottom of the warding.

I had expected the corpse to turn into charcoal, but it seems that not even charcoal remained. Should I be happy that I didn't have to dismantle the body?

As I cooled the magic stone and stored it in the item box, I saw a new black cloud forming next to the warding I had put up.

I've heard that demons keep appearing from the same place, but maybe the wards interfered with their reappearance.

There was still some time before the next summoning, but this outbreak was said to continue intermittently for half a day.

Since it was a hassle, I decided to try my luck a bit laterally.

The first step is to set up a ward near the surface to protect the ground from damage, but not to interfere with the cloud formation.

Then, from underneath, we launch a fire spell with several thousand times the magic power of the first fire spell, extending the duration of its effect.

Confirm that the fire magic has reached the center of the cloud, and detonate it with the magic accelerated by the wand.

The area around the cloud will be engulfed in flames.

The strategy this time is to prepare the flames before the demons are born, and destroy them the moment they come out.

If this succeeds, I won't have to keep watching for the appearance of demons.

I watched the flames for a while, but they did not seem to go out even after a few minutes had passed.

There's no damage to the surrounding area. The deployment was a success.

For about an hour, I looked up at the sky, scouting my surroundings from time to time near the surface, where the light was as bright as day even though it was evening.

Red and black balls began to fall from the red sky and hit the wards one after another.

When I approached to check, I found that they were the same magic stones that the other demons had dropped.

Due to the violence of MP, my job of watching the sky and eradicating enemies turned into a job of just collecting the magic stones while guarding the fire.

In half a day, I was able to collect about 9,000 magic stones.

When I returned to Soltia with a smile on my face, the adventurers who were guarding me came flying in.

...... Are you alright? I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that the sky was ablaze when you were there.　I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that.

It's probably my magic. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but I think it's a good idea.