Ever earnest, Arte returned the wood puppet to its place and sat it down. She wasted no time activating her magic to take control of the iron puppet. Unlike the wooden one, it produced a loud noise as it stepped its right foot forward to stand up. The puppet was an impressive sight, due in no small part to its weight and the shine of its metal body, but it was incredibly tough and had the power to match its weight. It was a completely different beast from the previous puppet.
Picking up on that, the onlookers went quiet and tense, watching the puppet’s every move. For my part, though, I was vividly reminded of a bunch of robot flicks.
“Here I go,” Arte whispered after she took a single deep breath. She began to move the puppet, making it launch into the air with a boom that echoed across the plaza. Though it might as well have been wearing full-body armor, it flew like it was made of feathers.
Unfortunately, its weight had consequences. Leaping through the air for even ten brief seconds made it land with enough force to shatter the ground beneath it every time. “Ah…”
Arte deactivated her magic so that she could apologize. “I-I’m so sorry!” she said, bowing her head in all directions.
Eh. We’re performing these tests in an open space, so nobody got hurt. It’s fine.
The crowd started chatting again. “…Incredible.”
“If that thing tackled one of us, we’d probably be dead.”
“Oh, Lady Arte, worry not! It’s fine!”
I turned to Arte. “Don’t worry; I can fix this no problem. How does it feel to control this thing? Is the process consuming more magic than before?”
Arte nodded, still looking apologetic. “W-well, um, it does feel a little heavier when I move it. More like, whenever I try to move it, there’s a slight delay before it responds? Oh, and when it lands after a jump, it takes more time to get it to do the next action. I’m…not sure about my magic consumption. I do think the amount of time I can control it for is shorter than before.”
“Hmm.” I jotted down her words in addition to my own observations. The iron puppet did in fact move slightly slower than the wooden one, and its reaction time wasn’t as good, either. To my surprise, however, the magic consumption only saw a slight increase over the wood puppet. “Okay, next up is the mithril puppet!”
“A-all right!”
Once Arte focused and began to control the mithril puppet, it leapt through the air just as swiftly as the wooden one. Not only were its arm and leg motions swift and precise, so were its movements after it landed on the ground. The onlookers were clearly impressed.
“Wow!”
“It’s made of mithril, but it’s moving that fast?!”
“I think this thing could beat a dragon.”
After about two minutes of letting her move it around, I called out to her, “All done!”
“Okay!” Arte replied, sounding relieved. She quickly returned the puppet to its starting position.
“Took a lot out of you, huh?” I asked, watching her.
“Y-yes. I don’t think I can control it for extended periods of time. That being said, it wasn’t as difficult to control as before. I feel like I could handle two at once.”
I nodded. “Then I guess we should try that next, huh? I’d like to investigate how exhausted you get. Are you still up for it?”
“Of course. Which two would you like me to control?”
“Since I want to study your magic consumption, let’s go with the mithril and iron puppets. They’ll make it easy to measure.”
Arte nodded, then activated her magic. The iron puppet stood first, followed by the mithril one. They simultaneously kicked the ground and broke into sprints, but the iron puppet was demonstratively slower. The mithril puppet ran all the way to the roadside tree trunks, then leapt up and spun in the air. At this point, the crowd was watching in stunned silence.
The wood puppet moved fastest, followed by the mithril puppet, then the iron. But the mithril puppet consumed the most magic by a huge margin. A good comparison would be modern-day vehicles: the wood puppets were like two-wheeled motor vehicles, the iron puppets were like trucks and such, and the mithril puppets were like sports cars. Thinking about it that way made it easy to see the relationship between the frame’s weight and its “fuel” consumption.
“I-is that enough?”
Abruptly, I realized that sweat was rolling down Arte’s forehead. She was looking at me and still controlling the puppets. A significant amount of time must’ve passed while I was lost in thought. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry! You can stop now!”
Arte quickly returned the puppets to their starting points, then sat down, looking relieved. “Oh, I’m fine. But controlling two at once sure is exhausting.” She flashed me a tired smile.
I nodded. “What kind of exhaustion is it? Is it different from when you controlled just the mithril puppet?”
Arte looked down and thought in silence for a moment. “Let me see… I think it was several times more exhausting. I believe I could control the iron puppet for up to two hours, but my limit on the mithril one is somewhere around thirty minutes. Controlling them together, I can probably keep going for ten minutes at best. The last time I controlled two wood puppets at once, it was exhausting, but I think I could do that for about an hour.”
I nodded and jotted down some more details. “Gotcha. So does that mean each additional puppet multiplies the magical consumption by itself? Or to the third power? Or are they just added to one another? Wait, it’s possible that there’s a fixed number based on the materials and capacity…” I whispered, analyzing all the possibilities. Arte giggled gently, surprising me. “Hm?”
I turned around to see her covering her mouth with one hand. “Ah.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
Arte gave me a troubled smile and looked straight at me. “I-it’s nothing. It just seems like you’re having fun,” she explained.
The affectionate look on her face embarrassed me a little. It was like she was calling me cute, which felt odd since she was also still a child.
“My bad,” I said, trying to rein myself in. “I think I lost myself in thought.”
“Hee hee… Well, I enjoy it when you have fun,” she replied with another cute giggle, only furthering my embarrassment.
Our audience took the opportunity to provide an entirely different kind of excited commentary than before. “Awesome! This is what I like to see!”
“Someone bring the booze! I can’t handle all of this!”
“Looks like someone’s jealous.”
“Leave ’em be. He’s just jealous ’cause he ain’t got a girlfriend.”
“Shut yer trap!”
Out of nowhere, the people around us were getting riled up. They were even setting up tables and chairs around us, complete with snacks and drinks.
“Go on, Lord Van! As you were!”
“Enjoy yourselves!” said another onlooker, sitting us down in a pair of chairs.
All Arte and I could do was exchange glances and smile.