Just as an ulterior motive was crossing my mind, Wilieris smiled. “We would greatly enjoy more offerings, but don’t stretch yourself too thin for it. While it could help you visualize your hex better, it won’t have much effect on your casting beyond that. Speaking of, we’ve noticed how quickly you found your footing when it comes to hexes.”
“I learned the basics of curses and purification. I have a good teacher, and I apparently have a knack for it. Now I’m stuck on recreating this lost magic.”
“Yeah, it’s no wonder. That spell wasn’t made for folks of this time.” Grimp chuckled, sipping on his sake.
“This time? So the people in ancient times were different from people today?” I asked.
“Oh, where to start...” Grimp turned to Wilieris for aid.
“Let’s begin with clarifying the premise.”
“First off, there is a difference between folks today and the folks who once cast the spell you’re trying to re-create. That comes down to how much magical energy they could hold. Folks had magical energy back then, just drastically less of it than folks today.”
“Do you know what magitons are?” Wilieris asked.
“It’s appeared in some of the texts I’ve read. Something about magitons being the smallest building block of magical energy. The magical energy stored in our bodies is a collection of magitons,” I said.
“Correct. Back when this spell was used, people were anatomically unable to hold the massive store of magitons that modern humans can,” Wilieris explained.
“A magical energy overload?” I guessed.
“Right again. Long ago, people of this world were much like folks on Earth. Magic was reserved for priests and priestesses who performed spells like rituals in groups,” Grimp supplied.
They went on to explain that, back then, the gods would help the people much more directly in the form of miracles. The origin of magic dated back to rituals asking for a miracle. In modern-day terms, they were filing a request for a specific miracle.
“I know you’re putting it in a way that I can understand, but it takes away all the gravitas...” I said.
“Miracles were not particularly a big deal for us to perform,” said Wilieris.
“By using our powers through folks, we could buffer some of the effects that’d affect the world too much otherwise. Still, every ‘miracle’ made pretty big ripples, so we set standards for what problems warranted a miracle, taught them to a group of folks, and had them request a miracle when humans couldn’t handle something on their own. That’s how the Creationism religion down there got started. It’s also one of the reasons why folks today have a different anatomy when it comes to magic.”
With Creationism in its infancy, every aspect of the miracle-requesting rituals was kept under lock and key...until, naturally, people who sought to research miracles for scholastic or selfish purposes paid no heed to the dogma of secrecy. Information spread slowly but surely. Before long, groups independent from Creationism attempted to re-create miracles. The original instructions from the gods had included warnings about handling magitons, but those had become fragmented in the process. In addition, these independent groups had a habit of cutting corners in the safety protocol department. As a result, many rituals ended in catastrophe, exposing humans and wildlife to an abundance of magical energy, which occasionally triggered a sort of mutation.
“One time, I saw a mushroom magicified by scavenger slime fertilizer... I didn’t know it could happen to humans.”
“The modern human body is able to safely store and expel any excess magical energy. For the most part, the worst that could happen from being overexposed to magical energy nowadays is a little bit of nausea. Back then, humans had not developed these functions yet. Over generations, the organisms of this world gradually built their resistance to magical energy until individuals could wield magic and humans branched off various species,” Wilieris said.
“You mean like elves, dwarves, and hybrids...”
“Those and a bunch more. Another example you’re familiar with is goblins—they’re descended from humans too,” Grimp said.
“Wait, goblins evolved from humans? On Earth, they were sometimes considered relatives of fairies.”
Grimp’s face soured as he downed the rest of his sake and began pouring out another. Slowly, he told me how magicification took many forms, and it wasn’t uncommon for humans affected by it to mutate beyond recognition. Those who were magicified into inhumane forms and their descendants were considered hellion—heretics hunted down by followers of Creationism. War ensued, of course, and expanded until it destroyed several kingdoms. That was when the first goblin was born.
“If you’re making booze with goblins, you already know how purely they pursue pleasure. On the flip side, they don’t worry much about things like their stink or grime,” Grimp said.
“That’s true.”
“They’re a species evolved specifically to preserve their kind through tumultuous times. Times were rough in those war-torn kingdoms. When normal folks could barely get by, persecuted groups had it particularly rough. It had to be better for their mental health not to be bothered with things that didn’t directly threaten their survival. In exchange for their intelligence, these goblins gained emotional resilience. But then they’d be easy pickings for anyone with half a brain that wanted them dead. That’s why they evolved until they were heartier than humans against injury and sickness. Their stomachs were stronger, so they could live off of half-rotten food, and they reproduced earlier in life and much faster than humans, so that their species could endure,” Grimp explained. “Those changes may seem like regression on the surface, but their species adapted well to their environment. As a result, goblins are still prosperous—so much so that goblins were once the most populous species among those descended from humans.”
I had no idea how much time it had taken for goblins to evolve this way, but their evolutionary trajectory made sense, especially when I imagined what would happen if society as I knew it on Earth came crumbling down. What would happen if the people of Japan, for example, were plunged from a comfortable life of immaculate hygiene, good food, and convenience, to one of life-or-death, postapocalyptic survival? During disasters, the stress of evacuation alone caused friction in shelters. It was difficult to imagine the emotional distress that would come with the crumbling of civilization. How many modern-day people could survive something like that with a sound mind and body?
On a related note, out of the new hires at my old office, the ones who had been hardworking and considerate to those around them had been the quickest to mentally break down. Maybe the key to a happy life was not caring so much? Besides, I’d heard once that there was only about a one percent difference between the DNA of humans and that of chimpanzees. It didn’t seem too far-fetched that goblins and humans shared ancestors.
“That’s enough on the history of human evolution,” Grimp said. “Let’s get back on track. That curse-breaking lost magic you’re trying to re-create is a spell utilizing magitons that was wielded by people who barely had any magical energy. Long story short, the density of magical energy was completely different back then.”
“You are performing the spell correctly, but your own pools of magical energy are interfering with the flow of magitons. Imagine pebbles rolling down a hill, then several heavy boulders rolling down and knocking the pebbles off course,” Wilieris said.
“No wonder the spell was working, just not showing any results,” I said.
Using moonlight to gather magitons wouldn’t do us any good when our own magical energy was scattering them all to the wind. On top of that, there was no way we were working with one hundred percent efficiency, which would explain the discrepancy between the magical energy used and the results we saw.
“In complete hindsight, I probably should have prioritized communicating with Korumi.”
“That’d be more efficient,” Grimp said. “As a fairy, he can sense magical energy much better than any human can. Being able to absorb it from nature means he can control magitons. There ain’t anyone better suited for giving you advice on this stuff.”
“Part of why we explained how the spell works is because we knew you would be able to ask him and discover the issues,” Wilieris added. “You have two more days of inspection left, and you plan to return to Korumi straightaway, don’t you?”
That was the plan, and I was going to tell him what I’d been up to, which would have driven the conversation from inspecting the cursed ground to the lost magic. I would have gotten the solution in a few days, even if they hadn’t told me today.
“We’ll take care of breaking your curse. Take your time with it,” Grimp said.
“Studying hexes seems to be benefiting you— Oh?”
My body started glowing—time to go.
“Time flies when we get talking like this,” Grimp said.
“You can say that again. I’ll be back soon,” I promised.
“Then you will make all of us happy. And one more thing, as thanks for the delicious drink and food. Once you return to the city, I recommend trusting your new employee Eleonora with larger tasks. While it can’t be helped during your inspection, she feels like she has too much time on her hands,” said Wilieris.
“Got it. I was going to have her start work in a more official capacity once we made it back. I won’t hesitate to delegate paperwork to her.”
“She would like that.”
“Take care, Ryoma.”
With Grimp’s word of parting, my vision went white in the familiar way it always did when I visited the gods through a chapel. In the next breath, I was standing in my room in the cottage again.
I’d unexpectedly gotten useful advice from simply sharing my leftovers. With newfound information, I was ready to tackle another day of work tomorrow.