Ch.149The Road to Jerikania (2)

“When I first came to the Miriam continent, I worried about how long it would take to explore everything, but time sure flies disgustingly fast.”

“It certainly does.”

They say you may know the path ahead, but not the one you’ve traveled.

It felt like just yesterday that I was trudging all over the Faerun continent, and now suddenly I was on this forced march. It truly gave me a sense of how times had changed.

Four days had already passed since we left Belfort City with all its troubles and complications.

The buildings of Belfort were no longer visible, and only scattered travelers and cargo could be seen along the main road.

Among them was an enormous heavy truck designed to transport over 100 tons of cargo at once. Simon and I had a conversation about how such trucks were made.

“How do they make trucks like that?”

“Well… it’s not much different from making a carriage. The only difference is that the frame is made of steel or other alloys instead of wood.”

“And then?”

“What else would there be? You roughly create a space for the engine, add various hydraulic systems and suspension to support the weight. Then you connect all the wires so everything works, and voilà—you’ve got yourself a truck.”

“Hmm… less complicated than I thought.”

“I told you. Nothing special.”

Whether in the countryside or the city, it seems boys are born with an instinctive attraction to large, heavy machinery that smells of oil.

In fact, I worked at a construction site partly because I thought the tall tower cranes looked impressive.

I had imagined that machines were created through processes so complex and precise that I couldn’t even comprehend them, but as I grew older and learned more, I realized machines were actually rather mundane.

Even that terrifying strong artificial intelligence is ultimately just an intelligence ‘equal’ to a human’s, and as we know, the intelligence of a single person isn’t all that impressive.

“I don’t think I’ll be any wiser at twenty than I am now.”

“Wisdom is difficult to attain. The idea that one becomes wiser simply by aging day by day is just a fairy tale from the old agricultural era.”

Simon said this curtly while stroking his beard.

It struck me anew that he was a sage, and even if I tripled all the knowledge I had accumulated, it wouldn’t match what he possessed.

“When you first learned spells. How did it feel?”

“…I felt like I had become a superior being.”

“A superior being?”

That was quite an arrogant statement coming from a sage.

Of course, he wasn’t a sage back then, so it didn’t matter.

“Just as fighters like you consider physical training a virtue, we wizards consider it virtuous to memorize more spells and be able to use them. I was young then and intoxicated by my status as someone qualified to learn magic.”

“Ah…”

“Unlike science, magic is for the few. You can’t use it unless you’re born with special lineage. That’s why some people developed mark magic.”

Wizards had rather unpleasant personalities.

I noticed this while teaching students at the Dreysen Tower—wizards are fundamentally arrogant.

It was understandable in a way; they could accomplish with a casual wave of a wand and an incantation what others had to struggle and fight to achieve with weapons.

“Wizards’ bodies are naturally weakened by mana. To be honest, if those elf sisters tried to rape me, I’m confident I’d lose in 13 seconds.”

“Why would we jump on an old man! We have eyes, you know!”

“If you have such good eyes, why did you put more alcohol than water in the stew?”

The elves sank magnificently in defeat.

“Anyway… that’s why for wizards, magic is literally a matter of life and death, unlike the auras of knights like you. A knight might survive without aura, but for an archmage whose body contains more mana than blood, mana weakens the body to the point where they must use magic to maintain life. It’s the complete opposite of aura.”

“Hmm…”

“Depending on magic for even the most basic functions like heartbeat and breathing means you’re essentially no longer human. That’s why we’re obsessed with magic. You can live without aura, but we cannot.”

If you need to cast a spell just to breathe, can that really be called living?

There’s a common saying, “Take out the wizard first,” but ironically, the ones who could most effectively take out wizards were the wizards themselves, like chain smokers addicted to cigarettes.

“Is mana really that harmful?”

“Think about it. Mana is the substance that powers fire and electricity to burst from a human body—how could that possibly be good for you?”

“…”

“Even battlers like you cut off perfectly good limbs and replace them with machines, or pluck out healthy eyes to implant artificial ones to enhance combat ability. We’re just doing it with our bare bodies.”

Hearing that, I realized we battlers were in no position to mock spell casters.

The port of Parcifal. At night, numerous illegal smuggling ships came and went, and the most valuable items they carried were the illegal body enhancements I mentioned earlier.

These enhancements, mainly produced in core cities like Faerus Veil or other technologically advanced cities, were common in Parcifal’s markets, and I was once interested in them too.

But I was too young for implants, and there were hardly any doctors skilled enough to perform enhancement surgery in these parts, so my interest naturally faded.

“In some ways, I envy you all. Even if your consciousness becomes nothing but a collection of zeros and ones stored on a data chip, you can still use aura.”

“Well… that’s true.”

The greatest characteristic of the soul is that it’s extremely difficult to define.

An advanced AI without a physical body can claim to have a soul and thus have one, while someone who looks human in every way might not have a soul if they say they don’t.

And purity of the body doesn’t really matter much to the soul.

If the body is like a monitor, the soul is similar to a computer’s main unit.

Of course, a bigger and better monitor can better utilize the performance of the main unit, but just because a monitor is damaged, cracked, or rusted doesn’t mean the main unit itself is broken.

It might be confusing, but the mind is different from the soul. Using the computer analogy, the mind is like the cable connecting the monitor (body) to the main unit (soul).

Also, human souls remain safe because the sun and moon protect us from dark predators with their light.

Damn, it’s Nariakira Saburo and Maria Taylor again. I must worship them.

*

As we continued our journey while engaging in this surprise worship…

As it was getting dark and we were looking for a place to build a fire, we found what appeared to be an abandoned hut.

“What’s a hut doing on this road?”

“It’s broken down but clean… Seems like someone stays here…”

As Simon said, the hut was partially collapsed, but the debris had been cleared away, and the inside was too clean to be truly abandoned.

But it was clean only by abandoned standards. The dust gathered in places suggested that whoever left hadn’t been gone long.

“Hmm… Should we look for somewhere else? This place feels too suspicious…”

“Why bother… Simon?”

“I’ll set up an alarm barrier.”

“Ah.”

I lightly bonked the incompetent elf on the head and started picking up branches lying around.

Although the house was half-collapsed, the fireplace was intact, so there would be no problem getting heat and warmth.

“You two go gather wood for the fire. It’s starting to get dark, so don’t go too far.”

“Ugh. You just don’t want to send your wife.”

“Send a spear carrier into this forest? Stop talking nonsense and go chop some firewood with the machete I bought you.”

“Tch!”

Although the elves can be annoying, at least they don’t argue with my orders.

Since I provided all their equipment, if they wanted to argue with my orders, they’d first have to give back everything they were wearing, so it was only natural.

“You go inside and start the fire. I’ll stay with Simon.”

“Okay.”

Smooch!

After giving my wife the firewood, I sent her inside (though “inside” is a stretch since it was open), and approached Simon, who was creating a barrier in a circle.

“Anything I can help with?”

“No. Unless you mean standing guard.”

With that, Simon waved his staff around to create the barrier.

Each time he waved his staff, geometric patterns were engraved on the trees, which were probably the anchors for the barrier.

“All done. Let’s go inside now.”

“Sure…”

I looked at the house and saw that a bright light was already shining from within.

“Looks like the fire’s already lit.”