“There’s no sense in worrying about the future. You’re not a superhero.”
I couldn’t save everyone, anyway. The best I could hope for was doing something about the situation at hand. Even in that case, I would end up far from perfect. I could save some lives, but others would be left to their demise for my lack of ability.
Some triage would be required of me, like a rescue team during a natural disaster. They couldn’t spend all of their time trying to save someone who couldn’t be saved, but had to turn to those they could save. That doesn’t make them heartless, because they’re not gambling out there. They have to make sure to save those with the highest chances of survival.
“That’s how things are. I don’t expect you to get over it, though.”
“Tia...”
“Do what you can. Neither the Inspector nor the god of this world would expect you to perform something you can’t.”
“Tia...”
“If it still feels too heavy on your shoulders, just let me know, and I’ll bite your head to pieces with a swift chomp. Then your job here is done.”
She put some force into her bite.
“Ow! Ow! Your fangs are digging into me! Your fangs!”
Nothing about that was a swift chomp. She would totally torture me to death with those fangs, like for real.
“Thank you, Tia.”
“Hm. I am your partner, after all.”
The dragon finally released her bite on my head.
Now that we had Hieronymus on board, our efficiency was higher than ever. Cait Sithes were a species very well versed in magic, and he had various magic spells under his belt, too. One of those spells, Lock-On, was extremely useful in our situation. Countless rays of light shot out of Hieronymus, illuminating where the beets were. The workers now only had to run over to those spots and dig up the plant. We no longer had to spend any time looking for the plant.
“I’m sure it’s a variation on targeting, but I wonder if there’s a point when he’s multi-locking so many targets at once?” said Miss Maley, the only other spellcaster in our party.
“There’s no point in debating whether or not there is one, fräulein.”
The magical cat elegantly waved his tail.
“I thought it necessary, and magic answered the call. Voila.”
“So you made this spell up on the spot?”
“Is magic something that can be made? Is it not something that should be sung to the rhythm of one’s heart? What is there, has always been, wise fräulein.”
I had a hard time deciding whether or not I understood what he was saying. Of course, I had no knowledge of magic, so I had no way of telling if what he said was accurate. However, Miss Maley looked amazed, and Tiamat was nodding to it, so I decided that he must have hit the mark.
Or else, just like Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen, he just dodged the question with his eloquence and likable attitude. The man that shared a name with the Cait Sith was famous for telling tall tales, after all.
“No, he is mostly correct. The wind, the tide, and the phases of the moon, for example, all have a purpose, but you could say they don’t have one at all. The same goes for my magic,” Tiamat explained.
Um, sorry?
I was more confused than before.
“Tia. Can you dumb it down some more?”
“No, I cannot. And since you have no talent for magic, there would be no point in explaining it.”
“How cruel! Maybe if I work hard enough, I could use magic, too.”
“It’s not just you, Eiji. Anyone from modern-day Earth won’t be able to use magic.”
The dragon sighed. Magic, superpowers, abilities... no matter what the name, it seemed that one needed a predisposition or a particular anatomy in order to wield it.
“Humans have little magic in them, and aren’t good at using it, anyway.”
Even in this world, there weren’t too many human spellcasters. It wasn’t something anyone could pick up and do. In addition, people on Earth have long forsaken the occult. Countries used to be governed by seeking the guidance of gods, and by horoscopes and prophecies. Those are the olden days.
Earth today is ruled by science and hard evidence. Nothing is acknowledged as law until the experiment proves the hypothesis under the same conditions regardless of who performs the experiment, and when, where, and how many times the experiment is performed. Even if a clairvoyant individual were to give the name of a wanted serial killer, no arrests or charges can be made without evidence.
“Do you consider that foolish?”
“I don’t. Much better than the alternative.”
Arresting someone based on the intuition of a detective, for example, would be ludicrous. Imagine the countless false convictions on our hands. Who could guarantee that said detective wasn’t acting on the basis of personal gain, anyway?
“Hm. A healthy way of thinking. That’s exactly why you’re not suited to perform magic.”
“I don’t really understand.”
“Magic is distortion. When the distortion is explained, there is no more mystique. That’s how magic faded away from Earth.”
While her explanation was rather shapeless, I decided that all I needed to know was that people from Earth, including myself, could not wield magic.
“But didn’t the hero and his party use magic?”
“They were a cheat code.”
“Touché.”
I shrugged. Using something or having something you ordinarily can’t is the definition of cheating.
As we continued our rather fruitless discourse, the beets were being rapidly harvested. With the pace we were at now, we would reach our goal earlier than expected, thanks to the mighty baron.
“It’s an honor to serve you, Lord Eiji.”
Picking up on my glance, the Cait Sith called back with the elegant wave of his tail. Lord? That kind of tickled. I had been using ‘sir’ and other honorifics of the like, but the word ‘lord’ carried a whole other meaning than reading it in books when I was the one being addressed by it.
“Oh, please. I should be thanking you, Lord Hieronymus.”
I tried using it in return, and it was super embarrassing. There was something painful about talking in a showboaty way once you hit thirty.
“A blushing middle-aged man calling out to his lord. There’s some indication for fiction of the fan variety.”
“And who exactly would be the target audience for that?”
A giant Russian blue and a man in his thirties...? I definitely would not ship that. I hadn’t realized that this sort of knowledge was implemented in Tiamat, too. How useless could her knowledge get? Eh, Miss Inspector?
“At this rate, our work should be done by the end of the day. Are we going back to town as soon as we’re done?” Tiamat asked me as she assessed our progress.
Our time of departure was actually a rather important matter. Enough that we should not have been engaging in discussion of fanfiction.
From the harvest point to the city of Lishua, it would take us about four days by carriage, which meant that we would have to make camp a minimum of three times along the way. Since we have a base camp set up now, everyone can take adequate rest, but on the road both our meals and rest would be more lacking than they are now, and we would have to spend manpower guarding the camp. This was because, unlike on our way here, we had cargo.
While we were the only ones who should have been privy to the value of sugar beets at the moment, who knew how that information could have leaked? It wasn’t too hard for me to imagine that someone might suspect that we were transporting some valuable goods under the guise of transporting the vegetable, especially when the job involved Mister Milon, the major merchant, and Mister Garish, the chief of the local Adventurers’ Guild, along with A-rank adventurer guards. If anyone was out there watching us and just thought we were here to dig up some vegetables, perhaps they were a little naïve.
“Let’s leave first thing in the morning. I’ll discard all of our food tonight, save for five days’ worth,” I declared.