Roughly an hour after the encounter with the demon.
After asking permission from a nearby merchant company, they had moved the carriages to create a vast clearing, and there they were burning the tent that produced the mystical space—the mage’s refuge in which the demon had appeared.
Fwoooosh.
“It burns well. As expected of something so expensive, even the smoke it gives off while burning is clean. With this, we can be at ease.”
“...Isn’t it a waste to just burn it like this? I don’t know how much something like this is worth, but it can’t be cheap.”
“Well, if I were an ordinary person, I’d probably be going mad from the waste, but I can just earn it again. Still, you’re right. I suppose I won’t be able to go to cafés for the next few months?”
Crackle, crack.
The mage gazed regretfully at her refuge as it was swallowed by fire and reduced to pure white ash, then soon shook her head and brushed the feeling away.
“And in the first place, now that a demon has appeared there once, this refuge is already contaminated by the demon’s ether. It’s not as if I have any connections with the higher-ups of the Church, and if an outsider tries to dispel a demon’s power, it costs an insane amount of money... So, yes. Burning it like this is the surest and cheapest method.”
“...I see. Then what should we do about this?”
At the mage’s words, I made a troubled expression and showed her the thick white book in my arms.
The “gift” the demon had given me.
According to the mage, this was called a grimoire.
Judging from the way she had burned, without hesitation, a magical space where one could rest anywhere just because a demon had appeared there once, wasn’t this grimoire I received from the demon also dangerous?
“Ah... that, for now, you should keep it.”
“Pardon?”
I had thought she would immediately tell me to throw it into the flames blazing over there, but unexpectedly, she scratched her head with a troubled look.
“Isn’t this also something contaminated by that demon’s ether?”
“Mm. This might sound strange after I told the demon to go to hell earlier, but since the demon gave that item to you as a gift, there is nothing wrong with it. And it has become an item that only you can possess.”
“?”
The mage looked at me with complicated eyes as I failed to understand her explanation.
Then, with a sigh, she muttered, “I guess it can’t be helped. This is knowledge you only learn after becoming a mage, but since you’re the person involved...” as though half resigning herself, half justifying it to herself, and began slowly explaining to me.
“I told you before, didn’t I? That there are mages who want to meet demons.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Right. As I said then, demons are dangerous beings. Just by being nearby, they try to contaminate the ether around them with their own ether. They’re natural enemies to mages who try to resonate with pure ether. Even so, many mages want to meet demons. The reason for that is the demon’s ‘gift’ you’re holding in your arms right now.”
A demon’s gift.
It was literally a “gift” that a demon gave, though rarely, when it met a human it liked, regardless of whether a contract had been fulfilled.
Something given without taking any price, purely out of the demon’s goodwill.
“A demon’s gift can take many forms, but it’s common for it to be given in the form of knowledge, like now. Like that grimoire.”
Glance.
She looked at the grimoire in my arms, with its thick white cover.
“Knowledge, by its nature, evaporates and disappears at once if it isn’t written down, doesn’t it? Take sorcery, for example. It’s been passed down since before we humans invented writing, but now almost none of it remains. There has to be some medium capable of transmitting information for knowledge to be passed on to the next generation.”
“That’s true. If it isn’t stored in writing, knowledge becomes corrupted or disappears.”
“Mm, exactly. So, to put it simply, what you’re holding is a book that contains knowledge humanity has lost, or knowledge humanity has yet to discover. That’s why it’s called a grimoire.”
A book containing knowledge humanity had lost, or had yet to find.
Because it contained knowledge that could never be learned through ordinary means, it was called a grimoire.
“That book probably contains knowledge related to Mystery, and among that, to magic. Because you sent the demon back by saying that since you didn’t yet have knowledge of Mystery, a contract with the demon would be unfair, right?”
“That’s what I said. I didn’t think it would actually work, though.”
“Huh. So you said that to a demon without even being certain it would work?”
“That’s right.”
“...You’ve got guts. I’m seeing you in a new light.”
She looked me up and down from the tips of my feet to the top of my head, as though seeing me anew.
She looked like an observer who wanted to study me, wondering where this fearless creature had come from.
“Is it because you haven’t learned mystic studies yet? Were you able to act so fearlessly because you have no knowledge at all?”
“So, this grimoire contains knowledge related to Mystery, right?”
“Uh, yes. That’s right. It’s only my guess, though.”
When I asked the question while she was muttering to herself, she immediately came out of her thoughts and nodded.
Even as she nodded, she looked somewhat dazed. It seemed the situation I had experienced was quite a shock even to her, a mage.
For someone who always seemed so composed to act this flustered.
“Only you will be able to open that grimoire, and the knowledge written in it will also be written in characters that only you can recognize. If there are things like illustrations, someone else might be able to infer something, but they probably won’t be able to interpret it properly.”
“I see.”
“So don’t be too anxious. There have been people who received gifts from demons long before you, and none of them died or were cursed because of the gifts demons handed them. In the first place, even in Academia... Ah, forget what I just said.”
Perhaps she had let something slip while explaining, because she hurriedly shut her mouth and warned me.
I had no desire to pounce on her mistake, so I obediently nodded, silently showing that I understood.
“Then this won’t let me use demon magic just by having it, or turn into a talking book, or anything like that.”
So nothing like those mysterious dictionaries from Harry Xtter would happen?
As I stared down at the grimoire in silent, pointless disappointment, I heard the mage burst into laughter.
“Pfft! What did you say?”
“Hm? No, well, since this is called a grimoire, that’s what I imagined. Like, once you become the owner of a grimoire, you can wield some incredible magic and burn the world down.”
“Puhahahaha!”
“?”
Did I say something strange?
This seemed like a fantasy world, so I had simply mentioned a cliché that appeared often in novels and comics I’d seen commonly in my previous life.
Was that really funny enough to make her burst out laughing?
“Hahaha! What did you just... pfft! What did you say?”
“No, did I say something I shouldn’t have? I just thought that if you got a grimoire, you’d get magic that could burn the world—”
“My goodness! You want demon magic that can burn the world? Hm?”
“It was just an example. An example.”
“Hahaha!! How do you come up with such absurd thoughts? Ah, I think I’m going to cry.”
Contrary to her words that she thought she was going to cry, both her eyes were already wet, and tears were beginning to leak out.
Ah, yes, so my words were funny enough to make you cry?
When I glared at her with an expressionless face, she examined my expression and soon stopped laughing.
Only the laughter stopped, though. The corners of her mouth were still twitching.
“Heheh! I’ve never heard anything this funny in my life. Ah. I want to tell my friends, too. I’m sure they’d laugh themselves to death like I did.”
“Excuse me, it’s fine that you’re laughing, but what exactly was so strange about what I said?”
“Heh, no, ha... So this is how someone who knows nothing about mystic studies thinks when they receive a grimoire? Ah, you made me laugh so much that the refuge I burned this time doesn’t feel like a waste at all.”
She took a deep breath in and out to calm herself.
There were still a few small laughs left in the middle, causing her to make odd “heehee” sounds, but fortunately, she calmed down.
“Phew... Ah, I’m calm now. Ask what you’re curious about.”
“You said the knowledge written in the grimoire was related to magic. Was what I said really that strange?”
“I suppose I should say it’s strange, or perhaps absurd? First, let me say this. Magic can’t do something as enormous as what you’re imagining. That sort of thing is as ridiculous as the divine authority claimed by the Church. Usually, no one asks about things like that seriously, but pfft! How did you think to ask that with such serious eyes?”
“...”
“Ah, all right, I’ll stop laughing. Ahem! Magic is like a tool, so to speak. Like the gears that move an automaton, or a cannon that can fire cannonballs.”
She looked into my eyes for a moment, then nodded and concluded.
“We mages can do things ordinary people can’t—for example, we could call that Heavenly Demon lying over there and fly through the sky—but that doesn’t mean we can lift a giant mountain and make a floating island, does it? At first glance, magic may seem like a miracle, but it is merely a tool that lets us perform mysterious deeds. It only twists nature a little. Because in the end, magic too is a technique used by humans.”
Magic is nothing more than a tool.
That was how the first mage I met defined magic.