Chapter 8

Razetto's report made Sora groan.

"Hmm. So, the lumber merchant and the church are planning a lottery?"

"Probably so. Do you want to interfere?"

Razetto asked in a lackluster voice. She was sitting in a chair, looking up at the ceiling, and had a wet cloth over her eyes. She had come to Sora's room on the second day of a five-day holiday, citing an urgent report. Since it was a holiday, she, who was usually lackadaisical, was even more listless than usual. Her relaxed posture made her look completely defenseless.

"Sora, I'm a guy, you know."

When Sora pointed this out, Razetto glanced at him and said, "Tell me in fifteen years."

Though she looked like a two-year-old, it was understandable, but Sora had his pride. Even if he thought about attacking her, her two-year-old body would make it clear that he would be defeated. Perhaps moved by Sora's frustration, Razetto removed the wet cloth and straightened up.

"So, how do we interfere?"

Since the lumber merchant was planning it, it would be difficult to monopolize the materials as they did last time. The lumber merchant wouldn't sell the materials, and they didn't know what kind of wood would be used. Sora shook his head in response to Razetto's question.

"We won't interfere. It won't make us any money, and it won't cause any harm. On the contrary, if it draws the attention of Minan and Father to the lumber merchant, it would be welcome."

While thinking about how to make use of Razetto, Sora's realistic thinking led him to decide to observe the situation. Razetto's face brightened, which Sora watched with displeasure. He shifted his gaze to the church through the window, not bothering to hide his bad mood.

"What's bothering me is the firewood that the homeless children are stockpiling."

Even homeless children without a home to return to would make a fire to avoid freezing to death. However, the firewood they would use would be twigs. It was clear that they couldn't be used to make lottery tickets.

"I can't figure out what they're going to do with it."

"Neither can I."

Razetto followed Sora's puzzled expression. Sora glared at the white walls of the church in the distance for a while before turning back to Razetto, as if regaining his composure.

"Is the investigation of the homeless children progressing?"

"It's still ongoing. We can't even narrow it down in a day or two. The homeless children have strong horizontal connections, so even if one disappears, no one will notice."

"Of course."

Sora had expected the strong connections among the homeless children. In a world without human rights, it was common sense that if they were alone, they would be easy prey for adults.

"But, according to Razetto, the church seems to be using the homeless children."

"Well, even in the loose organization created by the homeless children, there are traitors."

Razetto said this as a matter of course. Sora frowned, remembering the recent betrayal by Minan, who had told him about the lottery.

"I hate traitors..."

So, it was understandable that Sora muttered this.

"The homeless children are just trying to survive. If the church becomes their ally, they won't go hungry."

"Hunger, huh."

Sora had never experienced hunger. He had never lacked for food and shelter, either in Japan or since coming here.

"I see. If it's for food, it can't be helped."

– If that's the case, the world should be one where people don't have to betray each other to avoid hunger.

Even if it was called idealistic, if a "realistic means" was used to pave the way, it wouldn't be called a fantasy. And Sora had the knowledge of such "realistic means."

"An idealism without fantasy, well said."

"What is that?"

In response to Razetto's question, Sora shook his head and ended the conversation. "An idealism without fantasy" was a phrase coined by an American.

"Anyway, let me know when the lottery tickets go on sale."

Razetto acknowledged and left the room. She would probably go back to the city. In the empty room, Sora pretended to look outside and listened carefully.

"Seems like no one is coming."

Seeing that no one was coming to the room, Sora stuck his hand into a pile of toys in a corner of the room. There were wooden puzzles and building blocks, but he didn't seem to care. Finally, Sora pulled out a wooden knife wrapped in a patchwork cloth. The toy knife, which he used for pretend play, was too big for the two-year-old Sora, so it was stored at the back. When Sora removed the cloth covering the toy knife, he saw writing on the back of the cloth. However, no one but Sora could read it.

"Japanese as a code, it's complicated... but convenient."

Sora scratched his head and spread out the cloth, which was written in Japanese. The servants thought it was the random scribbling of a child. Razetto sensed something was up but ignored it to avoid more work. There was a reason why Sora didn't correct the servants' misunderstanding. This cloth was Sora's notebook. It contained excerpts from various books about magic.

Since the church, which nearly half the population of the domain believed in, defined magic as "a technology to alter the world created by God," magic books did not officially exist in the domain. Although they were said to be available on the black market, the Kleinzelt family, which was in cahoots with the church, could not obtain them.

– I can't believe they don't use magic for national defense, but they don't talk about it. Are they avoiding the topic?

Sora, who wanted to use magic, had no choice but to read through the books in the study to investigate magic. It would be fortunate if he could understand even a little of the magic's technical system.

If a real magician heard that Sora was trying to learn magic this way, they would laugh for days, roll around in the mountains for weeks to stop laughing, and suffer from laughter for years, with their abs surely splitting. Yes, it was a foolish act that belonged in a fairy tale.

"It's going to take a while. The activation method is vocal... probably incantation. And it seems a magic circle can also activate it. I don't know how to write the incantation or the magic circle, though. It sounds so edgy. I really want to say 'Twilight and beyond...'"

Sora picked up and organized the few pieces of information he had, excitedly.

"Okay, what's this 'reaction stone'?"

Sora had circled the passages that seemed to describe the technical system of magic and was reading through the remaining text to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He frowned at the passage titled "Methods of Using Reaction Stones." Most of the text he had collected was from church-related books, where the stone was highly valued, so the descriptions were scattered throughout.

"It seems to be a dangerous stone."

After removing the duplicate passages and summarizing the remaining ones, Sora learned that the reaction stone was a special stone that could distinguish magicians.

"Since they persecute magicians, they must have developed an efficient way to identify them, and this stone is the result? The mechanism isn't written, though."

It seemed that the reaction stone would glow when a magician approached, but there was no description of how it distinguished magicians from ordinary people.

"I need to find a way to deceive the reaction stone before learning magic, or I'll be caught by the church. I don't want to cross that dangerous bridge."

Sora decided to investigate thoroughly and began to look into the differences between magicians and ordinary people with a full smile, as if he had a tail to wag.

"If I had a hamster, I could make it use magic and then dissect it to see what changed, but there are no experimental animals in this world."

He muttered about a black magic method that would be despised by both ordinary people and magicians. Even as night fell and darkness and moonlight crept into the room, he continued to investigate magic. Just before a flustered Razetto and a frantic Minan burst into the room.