“Let’s go!” Ignoring his expression, I teleported us to the spot I’d checked that morning. Then, I pulled a rope from my subspace storage. Doggie immediately tried to back away and escape, so I had my grandson pin him down while I tied him up. This was my recently perfected turtle-shell binding technique.
Finally, to the knot tied around Doggy’s back, I attached an elastic rope—one I’d made by splitting and reweaving the vine that’d grown from the barometz’s belly. I’d then wrapped it twice around my grandson’s waist to complete the connection.
“Three, two, one, GO! Bungee!” I pointed straight down and gave them a thumbs-up.
“No way, no way, no way! I’ll die before I even get there! This place is magic resistant, you know!” Doggie clung to the spot, his face desperate. In his hands were the gloves I’d lent him, woven from Lag’s shed mane. Around his waist hung a pouch made from fire lizard skin. A cord was tied to the pouch, and I held the end firmly in my grasp.
“Now, now, Head Supervisor...”
My grandson cut me off with a stern look. “Outside school, it’s Regulus.” That seemed like an unnecessary order.
“His Highness Prince Regulus will remain standing. Probably?”
“Probably?!”
“Well, some days are like that. True to his knight-in-training roots, he charges ahead with sheer guts! Heh!” With a thud, I delivered a full-body kick to Doggie’s rear end. Bound by the ropes, he fell over the edge.
“What kind of day is this, I ask youuu?!” Doggie’s voice echoed clearly up here at the mountaintop. How peaceful.
Actually, though calling it a mountaintop was a stretch—we were actually above a volcanic crater. Still, there was proper footing here. It was probably spatter, I supposed—the stuff that piled up and solidified in the crater and then ended up being ejected by a volcanic eruption, when the force of the erupting lava was too weak to propel it far. One of the sons I’d given birth to in my last life had had his wedding ceremony in Hawaii. I thought I’d overheard a local back then talking about it, but that was all, so I couldn’t be certain.
I couldn’t help thinking of my last life, when we’d done a bungee jump from the ceiling straight down toward the center of the baseball stadium from the familiar half-open ceiling dome.
My grandson had the elastic rope connecting him to Doggie wrapped around his waist. It reminded me of my husband holding his ground at the very back of the tug-of-war at the sports festival. Somehow, it felt very nostalgic.
The gravity manipulation spell my grandson had cast on himself must have been well suited to this land. It wasn’t exactly going easily, but somehow it seemed to be working, unlike other spells. Since he was holding his ground properly, it didn’t seem like he’d fall in after Doggie.
Lava gushed forth below us. Well, not exactly—it was a thin, trickling lava flow. It streamed from the dome’s base and its sides toward the opposite edge, while Doggie was aiming for the crimson magic stone floating dead center.
“Got it! Yesss!” Doggie’s triumphant shout echoed from below. I was glad it was going well. Looking down, I saw Doggie stuffing the magic stone into the leather pouch as he bounced around with the energy of someone who’d just bungee jumped. “Whoooaaa, I’m aliveeee! I thought I was gonna dieee!”
His shouts kept cutting out—probably because of all the bouncing. Don’t bite your tongue...
“Guh!”
Ah, he’d bitten it.
“Use the rope’s momentum or something and climb up quickly,” I called down. “If you don’t hurry, it might erupt.” Sensing the rumbling ground subtly, I started swiftly reeling in the rope to retrieve the leather pouch.
The sensation of the air pressure that had been hindering magic began to ease.
“Huh?! Y-You’re lying, right?!”
Oh, another roar. Looking up, I saw the slowly flowing lava stream growing larger and beginning to sputter upward.
“Heinz, hold on tight to that rope!” my grandson yelled.
“O-Okay!” Doggie, who’d been struggling to climb the rope, gripped it tightly with both hands.
Strengthening his body with magic, my grandson slammed the rope he held in both hands down onto the ground once. Then, using the rebound from the bounce, he yanked the rope upward. Doggy was hauled up like a tuna on a fishing line, dancing through the air.
Just as crimson magma spatter followed in pursuit, I teleported us back to his dorm room with my magic.
It definitely wasn’t my fault he hit the ceiling and passed out.