“Originally, it was an enchantment for deflecting magic. Deflecting it was good enough for the Magic Armor Corps themselves, but the other troops behind them were still taking damage, so they discontinued researching it. That failed enchantment caught my attention.
“If it was able to deflect magic, I thought it must be exerting some influence on the way magicium worked. They say that magicium exists in both the atmosphere and in our water. That being the case, if I could apply a direction to it, maybe I could create something that would suck it in and blow it out. If I could concentrate the power from expelling it, maybe I could create a propulsion system… Well, that was the idea.
“That’s because moving the magicium in the air and water is the same as moving the air and water themselves. And so, I put a modified version of that enchantment into a metal ring, and that’s how I completed the Little Susumu Mark V, which sucks in magicium and blows it back out when you run energy through it!”
I was dumbfounded.
Genia was very articulate in her explanation, but the moment she started talking about enchantment magic, it went beyond my ability to judge whether what she said was true or false. Though, given the experiment went exactly the way Genia was saying, I figured she was correct… probably.
“Did you understand that, Liscia?” I asked.
“Not even the teensiest tiniest bit of it.”
It seemed it was a difficult subject for people from this world, too.
Realizing we hadn’t been able to follow her explanation at all, Genia forced herself to smile and shrug. “Well, like I was saying before, so long as you understand that one of these devices can do the same work as one sea dragon, that’s good enough.”
The man who had been clutching his head in his hands up, Ludwin, now spoke up. “But isn’t this thing kind of useless, then? I mean, you spent considerable resources just to build this one device, didn’t you?”
“Yeah… Well, it was easily enough to maintain ten sea dragons for a period of ten years…” Genia said.
“If it only does the work of one, then that’s a huge loss, isn’t it?” Ludwin asked. “Besides, unlike sea dragons, it can’t make tight turns.”
“Wh-What are you saying, Luu?! Can’t you see what this invention will bring?!” Genia cried.
“What it will bring?” Ludwin asked.
Ludwin seemed confused, but I had to agree with Genia on this point.
“She’s right. It really is an incredible invention, Ludwin.”
“Y-You, too, sire?” he asked.
“Just think,” I said. “If one of these can do the work of a sea dragon, then, applying some simple math, ten of them could do the work of ten sea dragons, right?”
“I suppose…?”
As Ludwin didn’t seem to get my point, I explained it in a way that would be easier for him to understand. “Well, can you actually bind ten sea dragons to something? I thought even a two-dragon setup like our battleship, the Albert, was unusual?”
“Well… Yes, that’s right. Even if you could bind ten sea dragons to something, it would be impossible to make them all follow the same order. Even in other countries, I think three is probably the limit.”
“In other words, even its use were limited to ships, with this machine, we would be able to move ships that were more massive than any before. For instance… imagine a cargo ship with five of these installed. It would revolutionize shipping.”
It would allow the shipping of large amounts of freight at once, you see. The reason I had wanted to absorb Amidonia was because more than half of this country’s border was with the sea. The new city we were constructing as a focal point for shipping was nearing completion, too, so being able to strengthen our maritime shipping capacity would be huge.
“Th-That makes a lot of sense…” Ludwin stuttered. It looked like Ludwin understood just how incredible this invention was now.
I asked Genia, “You said something about running energy through it before, right? What’s the power source?”
Since coming to this world, I hadn’t seen a single electrical generator, or even so much as a steam engine. Would the energy source for something mechanical like this be magic, like I was expecting?
“Well, sire, I’ve installed these inside it.” Genia pulled some sort of lump from her lab coat pocket and passed it to me. Though it fit in the palm of my hand, the jet black crystal cube was heavier than it looked. (It felt similar to holding a weight.)
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s a type of crystal commonly called curse ore.”
“Did you say curse ore?!” Liscia burst out.
“You know what that is, Liscia?!” I asked in the same tone.
“You didn’t have to say it like that…” she murmured. “In this world, we also use magic to mine ore. Water magic for digging, earth magic for reinforcing tunnels, wind magic for supplying air, and fire magic for melting down metals. But when we’re near a vein of curse ore, for whatever reason, we lose the ability to use magic. What’s more, if we try to force ourselves to use it…”
Liscia made a gesture where she quickly opened her closed fist, and said “Boom.”
“It explodes?!” I cried. “Aren’t explosions inside a mine really dangerous?”
“It’s a real source of frustration for the miners,” Liscia said. “If they’re digging a mine and they strike a vein of this stuff, they can’t dig any further, after all. In this world, we think of magic as the blessing of the gods and spirits, so this ore that makes magic unusable is a cursed rock that can’t accept their blessings. Basically, that’s why we call it curse ore. The troublesome thing is, it’s commonly found underground in Elfrieden,” Liscia added with an air of self-mockery.
The Elfrieden Kingdom was a country with little mineral wealth to begin with. Because of its mostly level terrain, it was possible to get a decent amount of iron, but gold and other such precious metals weren’t common here. If there were large amounts of curse ore thrown into the mix, too, then that would make the process of mining itself difficult. There sure were a lot of things I had yet to learn…
As I was thinking that, Genia wore a bold smile. “This ore is cursed? You shouldn’t say such silly things, princess. If anything, you could say this country has been blessed by the gods to have so much of this ore buried underground!”
Genia waved her arms with an exaggerated reaction.
“It’s because we look at it through the veil of mystery that we come up with childish ideas like it being cursed. Curse ore isn’t rendering magic unusable. It’s absorbing the energy from it. Think about that. If we can’t use magic near curse ore, and if we do, it explodes, where did you think that explosive energy came from? Isn’t it more natural to think that, because it’s absorbing the energy from magic, it explodes when it overcomes its tolerance threshold?”
Hrm… So, basically, curse ore was like a chargeable battery that had been absorbing the energy from magic? Then, if it was overcharged, it would explode.
…What was this feeling of restlessness? Were we, right now, witnessing something incredible? Something big enough that it might change the world?
Then Genia said something incredible. “So, I’ve succeeded in extracting the energy from curse ore once it’s absorbed magical energy. That’s what I use to power this device.”
“Wha?!” I yelped.
Her words sent a chill down my spine. If that was true, it really was like a battery!
There was still a lot I couldn’t understand just yet, but I could understand just how incredible the secret of curse ore was, and how incredible the woman who’d discovered it was. This was a world without electricity, or even steam engines. If we could acquire a technology for storing energy before any other country, this country would make great strides forward. In fact, it was a big enough deal that even growing more powerful than the Empire wouldn’t be just a dream.