Thanks to Ifrit placing part of his flame in the village of mages, Babel, I was able to enter Babel smoothly without much hassle.
Ifrit must have pitied the humans living in such a hot place because he absorbed some of the surrounding heat to cool down the temperature a bit.
As a result, I could build some rapport with the village chief managing this town, which was a pretty positive outcome. It’s a very exclusive village if you’re not a mage, so without this level of help, getting close to them would have been a pipe dream.
I mean, even if I disguise myself as a mage, my current goal isn’t just to become a member of this village—nope! I want to be in a position to check the magical stones coming into this village.
Ah, I guess I don’t need to inspect them directly. I just have to whip up some magic or a tool to check the stones instead!
That said, I still need to hook up with the village chief.
Through some mild convincing, I got assigned the task of inspecting the magical stones coming into the village, and the village chief even threw in another person to help me out!
Here’s a summary of my chat with the village chief:
“Thanks for bringing that sacred flame! The village temperature has dropped a lot, making it much more livable. But how did you cross that scorching desert?”
“That’s a secret. But in exchange for leaving that flame here, I’d like to make a request.”
“What kind of request? If it’s within my power to grant, I’ll consider it!”
“I’ve heard you’re getting a lot of external magical stones. I want to take on the task of inspecting those stones.”
“Why do you want to do that? The stones are key ingredients for the magic scrolls, which are a major specialty of this village…”
“Some of those stones carry dangerous energy, just a tiny bit of dark energy. If you use them without knowing, it could lead to a huge problem.”
“But…”
“If you don’t want to, oh well. I’ll just take the sacred flame back. I brought the flame because I felt sorry for your villagers, but if you can’t even do me this favor, I have no choice.”
“I-I’m sorry! Please think it over! I’ll set up a place for you right away!”
Thanks to this smooth talk, I was able to score the task of inspecting the magical stones coming into the village. Of course, I wasn’t doing it solo; the chief gave me an extra hand for the job!
“Are you the one who brought that flame?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
The young mage stared at my horns like he had never seen anything like them before, shock plastered all over his face.
“Why would you want to bother inspecting the magical stones?”
“Uh, didn’t the village chief tell you the story?”
“What story?”
“Nah, never mind. You’ll catch on when you see it.”
With that, we rolled on into the warehouse where the magical stones were being stored.
There were a few wooden boxes stacked in the corner of this tiny little storage space—that was it for the quantity of magical stones that came in.
“By the way, don’t even think about secretly pocketing a few stones. I’ll be watching you like a hawk.”
“Don’t worry; these stones aren’t worth much to me.”
What’s crucial here is that some of the stones are hiding those juicy fragments of darkness.
I popped open one of those wooden boxes revealing a whole bunch of magical stones jam-packed inside it.
Well, looking at it this way, there are quite a lot. Checking them one by one is going to be a total pain in the neck!
I mean, I could try to hunt them down one by one, but those darkness fragments are so minuscule, and I’m too big to locate them. It’s about as easy as finding a tiny black grain of sand in a desert. Talk about tedious and exhausting!
When faced with a situation like this, tools are the way to go.
Let’s see. I’ll fashion something that resembles a small hand trowel which I can hold in one hand, and enhance it with an ultra-sensitive detection feature to pick up even the slightest hint of dark energy. I should add a warning sound to alert me whenever it’s detected. And let’s throw in a control feature so it only activates when I press a button.
With that simple little magic stone detection gadget resembling a hand trowel, I scooped out some stones and poured them into an empty box. The best part? No warning sound blared while the young mage looked on, puzzled.
Beep!
“Huh?! What’s that sound?”
“Ah, finally found it.”
I emptied out half of the magical stones in the hand trowel and pressed the button again; this time, no warning sound went off, so now I transferred the stones in the trowel to the inspected box.
After checking half of the remaining stones, moving those that triggered no sound, and halving the ones that did to check again and again, I finally declared:
“I found it.”
I unearthed a magical stone about the size of a fingernail, harboring a fragment of darkness.
“What’s so special about that stone to warrant such a search?”
“Take a closer look.”
I whipped out a black diamond from my pocket and held it close to the stone, and a tiny fragment of darkness seeped out, flowing into the black diamond.
“Did something just come out of that stone?!”
“Yup. You caught that well. Your eyesight’s sharp.”
I thought that little fragment was tiny enough to go unnoticed, but thankfully, the young man didn’t miss it.
“So what was that just now?”
“A minuscule fragment of darkness. It happens to be present in only a tiny fraction of the magical stones.”
In fact, having searched nearly an entire box, this was the only stone where I found it.
The odds must be astronomically low.
“It’s like an impurity mixed in with the magical stones. I’m attempting to seal this energy away.”
“Seal it off…”
The young man looked skeptical, but what could he do? He had literally seen me doing it.
“I can’t just leave this energy lying around. This village is the primary receiving point for these magical stones. If I leave those dark fragments unattended, who knows what kind of trouble they might cause? Now that’s a secret I’m keeping.”
“A secret? You’re making it sound quite serious, but you say it’s a secret?”
“What I can tell you is that it wouldn’t bring anything good to this world. If those fragments of darkness get mixed into magic scrolls, something catastrophic might occur.”
“Something catastrophic… wait, could this be related to faulty scrolls?”
“Faulty scrolls?”
When I asked, the young man replied calmly.
“Yes. It’s rare, but sometimes a perfectly crafted scroll could either fail to activate, launch at an unexpectedly severe level, or trigger a completely different spell altogether. People have been injured or even killed because of that.”
“Oh wow.”
Faulty scrolls, huh. I wasn’t even aware of their existence. I just figured those random magic explosions from mage scroll crafting were due to flops in the process!
“I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. Should we do a little test?”
I pointed to the untouched empty boxes. If I could dig out the darkness-embedded stones, I might be able to test it.
But the young man shook his head emphatically.
“Actually trying it out seems a bit… dangerous. My life might be on the line!”
Well, testing something that might endanger your life is definitely a no-go.
So, how about this: if I clear out all the stones containing those dark fragments and make scrolls, and no faulty scrolls pop up… that could work, right?
“Regardless, if those dark fragments could be the cause of the faulty scrolls, that’s not something I can ignore. Could you prepare more tools to detect the dark fragments?”
“Hm? More?”
“Yup! I’m willing to pay a fair amount. If I can reduce faulty scrolls, I wouldn’t mind spending money!”
Hmm, payment isn’t really a concern. Oh! Wait a minute!
“No need for payment. Instead, I’d like you to gather the stones with the dark fragments and send them over to the Temple of Life.”
“The Temple of Life? Are you connected to that place or something?”
“Well… that’s a secret.”
I raised my index finger to my lips to add to the air of secrecy.
It makes much more sense for me to take the stones with the dark fragments to the Temple of Life where I can control them, rather than leaving them in the hands of humans.
“If you hand them over to the Temple of Life, I’ll drop by occasionally to collect them. After all, those stones with the dark fragments are practically useless to you anyway… This could even save you some disposal costs, don’t you think?”
It’s a no-brainer: clearing it up is better than risking problems from trying to use them, especially from the mages’ point of view.
“I’ll discuss that with the chief. But I think it’ll go smoothly. The issue of those faulty scrolls has also been a concern for him.”
“Great, I’m counting on that.”
If it goes down like that, life will be significantly easier.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
So, I whipped up several hand trowel-shaped magical stone detection tools and handed them over to the mages. They finalized the contract to transfer magical stones with dark fragments to me through the Temple of Life.
Awesome, this is way more efficient than doing it all myself. They say you should work smarter, not harder. Now, I just need to pop by the Temple of Life every now and then to collect those darkness-infused stones.
While I was setting up this system to gradually gather the fragments of Erebus, an important detail I had forgotten came rushing back into my mind.
If it’s a monster that ordinary humans or subraces can catch, I can recover the fragments that way.
But what about monsters too strong for humans to handle?
Should I just sit back and wait for humans to level up? Who knows how long that will take?
Lizardmen or giants could probably take down most monsters, but both are heavily influenced by their environment and can’t really move around freely… Hmm.
I found myself deep in thought.
What if I crafted a lethal weapon specifically designed to take down those strong monsters and used it to absorb their magical stone’s darkness fragments?
Like, I don’t know, a Hero’s Sword or something!
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