Shut-in Magician: 057

Shiu made a new friend.

They were Alestro and Viktor. Emil was in a different class and he felt a little different from a friend because he only talked to Alestro.

The reason why Alestro and Viktor approached Shiu was because Viktor was worried about how little MP he had so he was interested in 『magic conservation』.

Another reason was because Alestro had production magic.

They both wanted to get close to Shiu because they’d heard that he had production magic.

“That’s fine, but personal information really leaks out fast in this school, doesn’t it?”

Shiu sighed and everyone laughed. It seemed like this was normal.

“Nobles survive by just having information,” Martina pitched.

They started to talk about a lot of things from there, like simple magic conservation techniques.

He couldn’t announce it publicly yet, so he kept the rest a secret.

He had made the magic conversation technique into a magic formula and applied it to a magic tool. Then, he had applied for a patent at the Merchant Guild for this.

There was the Magician’s Guild, but he thought it would be better to do everything through the Merchant Guild because they were used to dealing with patents.

At first, he’d thought that it’ll be useful for only him, but Kiahi had contacted him through the communication tool and told him that the pendant magic tool, MP MEASURING INSTRUMENT, was found out by his acquaintance, so he should go apply for a patent.

It would probably take some time for people to copy it, but it would be a problem for Shiu if they said that they’d thought of the idea first.

So, he had no choice but to apply for the patent. It was accepted straight away and quickly became a commodity. The Merchant Guild were good at their work.

Which lead to him being told that he would immediately get patents for any new items he comes up with in the future.

He thought they were just flattering him, but he was asked by Zafiro via Chloe, “I was told to ask you if you’ve completed any new formulas.”

“I haven’t developed any for magic tools, and the others are for my personal use.”

“…… Shiu you’re really bias towards your own abilities, aren’t you.”

“Am I?”

However, Shiu thought it was normal since 『convenience』was ingrained to his core.

Human beings racked their brains over how to live in the most convenient way.

Especially Shiu. He had a lot of fun thinking up magic conservation techniques because he hated waste. He could even put this into his top five hobbies.

“By the way, I’m thinking of going on an outing tomorrow. Do you have any places you’d recommend around Royer Mountain?”

“Oh my, are you going all the way to Royer Mountain? Isn’t it far?”

“Well, I’m going to borrow a beast mount,” he lied a little when he replied.

“Really? Oh yeah, Feles is still a young beast mount, isn’t he?”

She glanced at Shiu’s waist, where Feles was clinging.

Feles would be entrusted to the Beast Barn once he becomes an adult, so he wouldn’t be entering the guild anymore after that. This was his privilege as a child.

“Let’s see, there are a few places I would recommend. I heard that there’s an outbreak of medicinal herbs downstream at the river flowing west from Lake Cordis. I thought there would only be Herbas there, but some of the herbs, from the infectious disease the other day, were also found there. So, requests come for them sometimes and I would be grateful if you could harvest some from there. But, it’s an area for rank 7 or 8 adventurers.”

“Oh, so it’s not a place for rank 10 adventures.”

“I really want you to raise your rank up a little more. But, that’ll take too much effort.”

She sighed and gave Shiu additional information, “The place is really far, and the reward isn’t that great if the requests are only for Herbas. A lot of people avoid taking the request because it’s not worth it.”

I see. Normal adventurers probably don’t go out of their way to go to the foot of Royer Mountain.

However, Shiu had spatial magic.

He could teleport there in an instant, and he could easily store the harvested herbs into his spatial storage.

“Then, should I take it? My rank’s not quite there yet, but is it alright?”

“…… You’ll be helping us a lot if you take the request. Oh, wait a moment.”

She was probably doing something so that the guild wouldn’t fall into debt. Shiu pretended not to see anything.

Then, a sentence was added onto the request form that’d been posted for a long time and it was lowered to rank 9.

They both smiled wryly at each other, then Shiu took the request form and went home with Feles.

The next day, he left his house early in the morning and went out of the Royal Capital before teleporting to Royer Mountain.

He arrived at his destination and diligently collected a large quantity of medicinal herbs such as Herbas. It was possible for him to harvest them with magic, since he’d already gotten accustomed to it; so he used spatial magic to collect all the herbs, that were destroying the ecosystem, in one swoop.

He’d used production magic to divide the herbs up just in case, (《SORT》) (《EXTRACT》) (《WRAP》).

He casted 《DRY》on one block.

Then, he dried the rest of the herbs to make them easier for use. It was easier to dry them with wind and light magic so he put them into a spatial wall to dry them.

At the same time, he had also cast《FOREIGN SUBSTANCE REMOVAL》.

Even so, there were a lot of herbs.

This time, Shiu’s purpose was to collect special materials from the highest point of Royer Mountain, the summit. He also wanted to collect Herbas for the request.

However, he was worried about the abnormal outbreak of herbs. It may seem like a good thing to have a lot of herbs, but this was overkill.

Shiu headed upstream to find the cause of this.

Although Feles was struggling at first to climb the rocks in the river because he was unfamiliar with them, he started having fun playing in the cold water and was crying out happily.

Shiu also climbed because it levelled up his strength and endurance.

Unlike Jota mountain range, the sun often shone on Royer Mountain. It was called a sacred mountain and he felt great even though he was only close to it.

It took him several hours to climb the mountain, even though it wasn’t very steep and finally he arrived at a large panorama which appeared before his eyes.

He concluded that this was Cordis Lake.

“It’s so beautiful ~.”

The air was completely fresh.

The incredibly tall mountain was reflected in the lake. The mountain was covered in snow right now, so it looked like Mt. Fuji.

Trees surrounded the lake and they were bright green, although it was winter.

It was a beautiful scene, but something was strange.

He walked to the bank of the lank and saw something wriggling.

What is it? He thought and Feles cried out in a pitiful voice, “Nya~.”

Shiu heard that as, “There’s something weird there.”

He laughed because he thought it was fun and Feles hit his foot with his bushy, mop-like tail.

“I’m sorry, my bad.”

He continued walking and noticed the source of his discomfort.

This was the first time he’d seen a demon since coming to this world.

“Ah…… It’s a slime!”

He had heard about them when he used to 【protect children on their way to school】.

He heard the children say, “Slimes are easy to defeat!”

But in this world, according to the geezer who was an ex-adventurer, slimes were surprisingly difficult to hunt.

It was slimy, so it was difficult to cut and even if you could hit it, they can return to their normal state.

It escaped quickly when people tried to catch it with their hands and even though they looked burnable they weren’t.

Apparently they were water demons and it was impossible to defeat them with water. Even piercing them with ice didn’t work, because it was the same as piercing them with a sword.

Therefore, low ranking adventurers couldn’t defeat them.

They didn’t do much harm and their monster cores were small, so it wasn’t worth subjugating if one thought about cost-effectiveness.

Therefore, it was common sense not to hunt slimes.

Even so, there it was.

It was really unlucky for him to have such a large amount of slimes in front of the lake.

“Was it because of over-nutrition? There’s even slime demons here.”

Hmm, Shiu pondered.

“But, the cause must be different. Slimes need a reason to mass breed, after all.”

Either way, he was worried that ecological anomalies would occur for creatures living in the lake because of the slimes mass breeding. In fact, the ecology might have already gone out of control. A large number of water birds were dead nearby.

Shiu tried to hunt the slimes with his experimental magic.

(《ABSORB MANA》)

They quickly died. He poked it and it didn’t move, even though it was still slimy. It shook like jelly when he picked it up, but that was all.

He threw it into his spatial storage, and it appeared to be dead since it’d gone in.

Then, this would be easy.

He cast (《APPRAISAL》) (《EXTRACT》) and (《ABSORB MANA》) in the places he could see.