“Did you know there are mysterious powers in this world beyond what the eye can see?”
“Mysterious powers?”
“Hm. I suppose you don’t.”
The carriage that had been climbing the mountain road, cutting through the wind, slowed when a small clearing appeared beside the road just as the coachman had said. It parked in the clearing and stopped for a rest.
The coachman stayed near the carriage to tend to the two horses that had been pulling it, while we got down and walked to the far edge of the clearing, far enough that he would not be able to hear our voices.
Because the mage had led me away with the implication that what she was about to say was not something outsiders should overhear.
Unlike my previous life, this was an age where every single piece of information held tremendous value, so I understood.
For instance, the Prah family’s knight training method was also something like a secret art passed down only to members of the family for generations.
“Mm… Let’s start from the beginning. Ahem! Have you ever heard of the three components that make up this world?”
“No.”
“Well, I suppose this kind of occult knowledge is something one might learn as part of one’s education in the Holy Capital. It must be difficult for people outside the Holy Capital to come across.”
At my denial, she nodded, then stood at the edge of the clearing and pointed toward the forest.
“What do you think that forest over there is made of?”
“…The forest?”
“Yes. You can say whatever comes to mind, so tell me what you think.”
“Hmm. I’ve never thought about it before.”
What was a forest made of?
If I thought about it using the little scientific knowledge I had from my previous life, wasn’t a forest ultimately nothing but dust made up of atoms?
Or, if I thought about it philosophically, since the concept of a forest was something humans had created, one could say that a forest was an illusory concept and had never existed in the first place.
But the place where I had been born was a fantasy world where a person could easily beat a giant bear to death with their bare hands, and where mages truly existed.
If I tried to show off with knowledge from my previous life and answered that way, there was a high chance it would not apply in a fantasy world.
So even if it was a little abstract, I decided to answer with words anyone could agree with.
“A forest is a collection of trees. That’s what people call a forest, after all.”
“Hm. Then are there only trees in a forest?”
“No. There would be streams, and animals living in the forest as well.”
“Mm. As expected, you aren’t stupid. I won’t have to waste my breath explaining in circles.”
Perhaps she liked my answer, because she nodded at me with a satisfied smile.
“Now, let’s think about it. If that forest were the world, what would be the thing we see the most? Trees, of course. Trees can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands, so among the elements that make up the world, they are beings that belong to matter.”
“Matter.”
“That’s right. You, I, and most beings in this world are made of matter. We are nothing more than tiny creatures affected by time.”
“I see.”
Nod.
I nodded to show that I understood her explanation.
Then she looked at my face, and without delay, moved on to the next explanation.
“But do you think there are only trees in a forest? There are certainly animals, little streams, and groundwater beneath the earth that our eyes cannot see. If you walk through a forest, small animals may dart out, but unless you possess specialized skills like a hunter, they are too fast for you to touch by ordinary means. Mm. This may be a bit of a leap, but in other words, they are beings that can be seen but not touched: souls.”
“Souls.”
“Yes. This time, shall we use the stream as an example? A tree can never grow on its own. Without water, wouldn’t it wither and die? Matter is the same. Without the current called the soul, matter can never grow. In other words, the soul, the second component that makes up the world, seems to be the element that weaves the cycle of circulation, making a material world that might otherwise be filled only with static beings be born, grow, age, and finally die… Hm, was that too difficult an explanation?”
To sum up what she was saying, wasn’t it basically that souls breathed life into a world made of matter?
Unlike my previous life, where the existence of souls had not been proven, it seemed this fantasy world into which I had been newly born definitely possessed an element called the soul.
If someone who had introduced herself as a mage could speak of it so confidently, then the existence of souls must already be treated as an established fact in this world.
“Mm, so what you mean is that trees—in other words, matter—would not change without souls and would merely exist in a static state?”
“That’s right! Matter never disappears or increases without the intervention of the soul. Even if a tree rots and becomes soil, the matter that composed the tree has merely transformed into another form and continues to exist. The total amount of matter itself hasn’t changed, has it? Are you sure this is really your first time hearing this? If so, you’re smarter than my juniors.”
“…Then what is the final, third component? I have a feeling that one has something to do with mages.”
At her praise, I waved my hand a couple of times with an embarrassed expression and asked about the part that interested me most.
Matter and soul.
The fact that souls existed in this world was interesting, but even if souls truly existed, without some other factor, a person could never beat a house-sized bear to death with their bare hands.
There had to be some kind of foreign power like mana, the sort commonly found in fantasy worlds.
A third component that would allow humans to transcend the limits of matter and become superhuman beings from fantasy.
“Heh. Having such an enthusiastic student makes teaching worthwhile! I think I understand why professors favor passionate students.”
Saying that, she looked at me with a smile, then raised her hand and pointed to the sky.
“For a forest to grow, water is, of course, indispensable. But it cannot grow with that alone. There is one component missing, isn’t there? What do you think it is?”
The moment she pointed at the sky, I understood.
Of course, for plants to grow, something like oxygen would be most necessary, but from what I could tell, this world’s knowledge of chemistry did not seem particularly advanced.
Oxygen, nitrogen, and the like would all probably be lumped together and called air or wind.
Then there was only one element left.
“The sun.”
“Yes, correct! To be precise, sunlight.”
The sun, which had been hidden behind clouds, bestowed its grace upon the tip of her finger with perfect timing.
Her slender finger, shining brightly in the sunlight, traced through the air and descended.
“For a forest to be maintained, there must be trees that symbolize matter, and there must be the water current, the soul, that nourishes those trees. But if the world truly existed only by these two elements, then forests identical to those on the surface should exist even in the underground world where the sun does not exist. But they don’t, do they? That is why the people of old thought this: Ah, there is one more component in this world besides matter and soul. One whose influence is so vast, like the sun hanging in the sky, that we can scarcely even perceive it.”
Her descending finger finally stopped and pointed to a certain spot.
It was a transparent mushroom at the root of a tree, receiving the sunlight and scattering it like a prism, flaunting its presence to the surroundings.
A rare mushroom, one of the high-class ingredients commonly called a jewel mushroom.
“As you walk through the world, there are beings that possess elements set apart from everything else, as if they do not belong to this world. Fairies are like that, and so are the gigantic monsters that live in the sea, and the automatons that turn their gears and move endlessly. They are made of matter, and souls exist within them, but unlike ordinary beings of this world, they possess something called ‘extraordinariness.’”
“Extraordinariness.”
“Yes. Like this mushroom. Other ordinary mushrooms do not have the ability to scatter light like this one does. They are all the same mushrooms, so why is only this mushroom displaying such an extraordinary ability? Because this mushroom is a being capable of responding to sunlight.”
She bent at the waist and plucked the jewel mushroom that was scattering light in rainbow colors.
Pop.
Then the light the mushroom had been reflecting shattered, and it transformed into a damp, grayish-white mushroom like the ordinary mushrooms scattered here and there.
No, that had been its original appearance. It had simply possessed the ability to reflect light, making it look like a jewel.
“We mages call the third component, the one that breathes shining ‘extraordinariness’ into the world made of matter and soul, ‘ether.’”
“Ether.”
“Yes. Ether cannot be seen with the eyes or grasped with the hands, but it certainly exists. Extraordinary beings can respond to ether and emit special abilities, just as this mushroom responds to sunlight and shines.”
“And that is what a mage is.”
“That’s right.”
She held the already dead mushroom between her fingers.
Then.
Whoosh!
Even though it was clearly not alive and was not touched by sunlight, the cap began to shine like a jewel, as if it had been alive only moments ago.
As if her fingers were sunlight.
“Mages are people who respond to ether and handle ‘mystery’—in other words, magic—that matter and souls cannot perform. The Academia was established to conscript those who show such sprouts and defend against mysterious beings that attack the Empire, or further, to expand the Empire’s domain into unknown spaces steeped in mystery.”
“…”
“Of course, not everyone who shows a sprout goes on to bloom. Only an extremely small number truly blossom and obtain magic, while the rest end up as half-baked failures who never acquire it.”
After saying that, she squeezed the mushroom in her hand tightly.
Crack!
Then, with a sound like shattering glass that could not possibly have come from a mushroom, the jewel mushroom burst into transparent fragments and dissolved into the air.
Having absorbed the ether of the jewel mushroom, she smiled with satisfaction and said to me,
“Mm. As expected, since this place is close to the Great Forest of the fairies, even a mushroom like this contained ether of fine quality.”
The sight of the jewel mushroom being absorbed into her hand and shattering into pieces was truly magical.