Liscia hurriedly shook her head. "I-I've never seen one. I mean, spirits are the
stuff of legend. But magic, and magicium, the base substance used to produce it, is
said to be a gift from the spirits. They've got to be out there somewhere, right?"
"That's not enough to prove their existence," Genia shrugged, looking dismayed.
"Do you see now, Your Majesty? Maybe you, as someone not originally from this
world, might actually be more able to understand? Because there's this mysterious
power called magic in this world, it's harder for people to see the truth. Snow falls
and the ice forms in the rivers in winter, then it melts when it gets warmer in the
spring. That sort of obvious thing is simply hidden from them by magic."
That was... something I had sensed myself. I had just been thinking, "Because
magic can do anything, perhaps the people of this world don't have much of a sense
of wonder," earlier.
"Everything mysterious or miraculous is hand-waved as the power of magic or
little spirits we can't see," said Genia. "Until we solve this thing called magic, the
greatest mystery of all, we can't completely deny their absurd theories. It's such a
pain."
The frown on Genia's face after she said that probably wasn't only because of the
sip of coffee she took.
"This is the truth," she went on. "While we were studying the jewel discovered in
the dungeon, we had the chance discovery that if we used water and wind elemental
magic on it, it would take in the scenery around it and project it through the
receivers that were also discovered. The bit about sylphs and undines was just an
explanation someone came up with later, thinking that maybe it was made possible
by the spirits' blessings."
"Then, are there no sylphs or undines?" I asked.
"I can't go as far as ruling that out, either. They may be out there, somewhere. I
mean, we've got a country conspicuously called the Spirit Kingdom of Garlan, after
all. But, at present, I have no definitive proof of their existence."
Well, it was impossible to prove the non-existence of a thing, after all. But this
was huge.
I had assumed this was a world of sword and sorcery, like the kind you'd see in
an RPG. No, well, they did have both swords and sorcery. That's why I assumed it
wouldn't be weird for spirits to exist, too. Was that just something I convinced
myself of?
"Well, what about the godbeast said to protect the dark elves' forest, then?" I
asked.
"Oh, that one's fine," said Genia. "Godbeasts definitely exist, or did at one point. I
couldn't tell you if there's one in their forest or not, though."
"That one exists?!"
"I mean, the greatest godbeast of all, Mother Dragon, really does exist in the Star
Dragon Mountain Range. Yep, yep, I can understand why you're confused. The line
between things that exist and things that don't is vague in this world. That's another
factor that makes it hard to see the truth."
"My head's starting to hurt," I complained.
"Are you okay?" Liscia placed a concerned hand on my shoulder.
I put my own hand on top of hers and answered, "I'm fine," but... internally, I
wasn't fine at all. In the course of a few minutes, I had lost my understanding of this
world.
There was magic, but I didn't know if there were spirits or not; but these things
called godbeasts did exist... nothing made sense to me anymore. I would need to
collect a list of more things that did and didn't exist, then compare the two before I
would have even a vague sense of what this world was like. That was how I was
starting to feel.
"Getting back on topic, here's the second mistake," said Genia. "Well, I've pretty
much told you it already, but it's 'the jewel is a tool to send out images and sounds it
picks up' part. Like I told you before, the 'broadcast function' of the jewel is
something we discovered by accident when we tried using water and wind magic on
it. In other words, we've only been using the jewel for broadcasting."
"Wha?!" I exclaimed.
Then, did she mean... the jewel wasn't only a tool for broadcasting images and
sound?
"For instance, mankind uses the water wheel in a wide variety of applications,"
said Genia. "They're not just for irrigation; we also use them to thresh and pulverize
wheat, and to spin thread, too. But, if someone who had never seen a water wheel
before saw a spinning wheel, don't you think they'd assume it was a tool for spinning
thread?"
"That makes sense..." I said slowly.
Though, if she'd used an example with more applications, it would have been
easier to understand. For instance, imagine if someone in this world discovered a
cellular phone, and then they accidentally discovered it took photos while they were
messing around with it. The people in this world would think that cell phones were
cameras. The same way we had been thinking of the Jewel Voice Broadcast jewel as
a TV camera...
"Well, then... what are those jewels, really?" I asked.
"Yeah. We know that one." Genia gave my hesitant question a clear and confident
answer. "They're what's commonly referred to as a dungeon core."
Dungeon cores.
They were said to be the most important part of a dungeon, maintaining the
unique ecology of the labyrinth from its deepest level.
I say they were said to be, because it was just someone's deduction.
If these dungeon cores were destroyed or stopped, the environment inside the
dungeon (the temperature, the humidity, and more) and its ecology would collapse,
turning it into a ruined dungeon. While wild creatures might come from outside to
live in a ruined dungeon, no more monsters would appear after that point, so it was
assumed that these cores were central to a dungeon's function.
Incidentally, the adventurers of this world made their living exploring dungeons,
but their ultimate goal was to clear the dungeons by stopping these cores.
As I had just heard, dungeon cores were used as Jewel Voice Broadcast jewels. If
they brought them back, they could sell them to the state for fame and an immense
fortune. However, it tended to be that the closer they got to the lowest point of the
dungeon, the more powerful the monsters that appeared. Across the whole
continent, it was only every few years, or decades, that a dungeon would be cleared.
That was why ordinary adventurers like Dece and Juno made their living
protecting merchants and caravans from bandits and wild beasts, or killing
monsters that came out of dungeons or the Demon Lord's Domain. Even if
adventurers occasionally went dungeon delving, most did it to sell materials from
the monsters they defeated there, or to sell off the artifacts they might, on rare
occasions, find. (There was nothing convenient, like treasure chests.)
Let's get back to talking about dungeon cores.
Until a dungeon core was stopped, it would continue to give birth to fierce
monsters from somewhere. To this point, no one had ever brought back a core
without stopping it. That was because no one wanted to see the surface end up full
of monsters as a result of bringing back a working core against all common sense.
In other words, dungeon cores had only ever been studied in a broken state.
In my earlier cell phone example, it would be like the person playing with it had
somehow managed to fix just the camera function and were using it for that. In that
case, you might think it would be a good idea to research them and search for other
functions they might have, but... Here's something to consider.
Cell phones don't spit out monsters.
If you knew that the cell phone had a self-destruct function that would blow away
everything around it, would you want to search for any other features it had?
That was one of the reasons why research on dungeon cores hadn't advanced.
"Though, with the level of technology in this world, restarting a dungeon core
once it's been stopped is impossible," Genia said. "I mean, we don't even know how it
worked in the first place." Genia shrugged, looking down into her mug. "I can
understand why people would want to explain it with magic, I guess. It's fear of the
unknown. It's scary to have something exist that you can't see or explain, so people
try to force an explanation in order to grasp and understand it. ...No, just to feel they
understand it, maybe?"
"That's why they make it the work of magic or miracles," I said.
"Precisely! Oh, I'm glad our king is the understanding sort," said Genia. "If this
had been the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria, I could have been thrown in jail or,
worse, burned at the stake for talking like this."
"Burned at the stake..." I thought she must be exaggerating, but Genia looked
absolutely serious.
"There's a tendency in this world to think of magic as the grace of gods or spirits,"
she said. "That tendency becomes stronger with the strength of a person's faith in
religion. That country's a theocracy. The gods or spirits are the very source of their
authority. They can't recognize the existence of any research... or researcher if it
would pull back the curtain on that divine mystery."
"...You could be right," I said.
In countries with too much religious fervor, those who try to discover the laws of
nature sometimes become suppressed. Those who give explanations against the
teachings of the faith might be treated as heretics and, in the worst cases... killed.
Even Galileo had been forced to recant his theory.
...How stupid.
"This country won't end up like that," I said. "I won't allow it."
"I'm very happy to hear that." Genia clapped her hands on her lap and smiled
broadly. "So, here's the thing about us people from the House of Maxwell. We
thought that there might be another principle in this world outside of magic, and
we've been studying it. It's true that some of the dungeon core's functions were
brought back to life with magic, but when we imagine how the dungeon core was
created, we think it has to be a product of engineering, or mathematics. It's not the
power of miracles; if we investigate it thoroughly, we believe there is a functional
truth to be found. For convenience's sake, we call this separate principle 'overscience.'"
"Over-science..." I murmured.
"That's O-Sci for short."
"'Oh, sigh'... Don't shorten it like that," I said.
"And so, our clan, as people who study over-science, refer to ourselves as overscientists." Genia puffed out her chest with unironic pride.
"I heard from Ludwin that you're a mad scientist, though?" I asked.
"I'd rather not have a lame name like that."
"I don't see the difference!" I cried. "Over" was cool, but "mad" wasn't? ...I didn't
quite get her logic.
Genia said, "Now then..." and stood up. "I'd like this king, who seems like he'll
become a sympathetic supporter of mine, to see my inventions."
"Yeah, that's what we came here for," I said. "Please, show me."
"Roger that," she said happily. "I think I've got just the thing. Could you come
outside with me?"
Genia rose from her seat and left the house. Apparently the invention she wanted
to show me was outside. If so, it might have been behind the divider I saw on the
bottom level.
Ludwin had muttered "Honestly..." to himself and followed after Genia, so it was
just me and Liscia left behind in the house.
"If there's one thing to say about her, she's different," Liscia said with a wry smile.
She must have meant Genia. I largely agreed with that opinion, but I was
beginning to have certain hopeful expectations for her.
"Still, she may be just the kind of talented person we've been looking for." I kept
my arms crossed as I expressed my thoughts. "When I saw the imposing sight of the
Imperial Army at Van, I realized we can't leave things the way they are. I've made do
with things that already exist up until now, but going forward, we'll need to be able
to come up with and create things no one has seen before. To create revolutionary
new technologies, adopt them, and move the times forward. If we don't, this country
will never be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Empire."
"...You're right," Liscia said.
"So, I've finally found a method for moving forward into a new era."
"A method?" Liscia echoed questioningly.
I nodded firmly in response. "In the history of mankind, there have been those
who were ahead of their time. They have a gift of foresight, break down established
notions, and one of them alone can be enough to change history. Although in many
cases, they're lost in the flow of the times, or weeded out by natural selection."
For instance, take the "universal genius," Leonardo da Vinci.
Da Vinci is famous for his painting, the Mona Lisa, but he left behind designs for a
surprising number of inventions. They say there were even designs for a tank, a
diving suit, and a helicopter in there. Setting aside the feasibility of them, if those
inventions of his had been researched properly, the history of Europe might have
changed dramatically.