Early DAR Vol. 5 Chapter 17 Part 2

Full title: Starting a New Life for the Discarded All-Rounder

Note: If you found any typos/mistakes, pls write them in the comment. Thanks.

Translator: Airis

____________________________________________

Riding the wind, Uncle Gry and Roa kept ascending until they reached the upper rim of the shaft.

<This level above is the top floor. It used to be our nest.>

The hole had not pierced through the ceiling of that floor. The space above Roa was covered by a stone, arched vault; if Uncle Gry was to be believed, the floor above that ceiling was the topmost level the gryphons used as their nesting ground. Apparently even they hesitated to bore a hole straight through their own nest.

“Uncle Gry… is that really okay?”

<Hm?>

Prompted, Uncle Gry followed Roa’s gaze. Roa was watching the exchange of spells raging all around them.

<What do you mean by “okay”?>

Earthen and plant-based magic rained down on Roa and Uncle Gry. Uncle Gry’s wind magic nullified every strike. He no longer seemed inclined to handle them one by one; a violent gale howled around them, turning the area into a veritable tempest. The only windless pocket of safety was a circle of perhaps two meters around Roa and Uncle Gry. The gryphons looked like they were barely enduring it, while other nearby magic beasts were swept up and flung into the walls, crushed on impact. Uncle Gry was casting an overwhelmingly powerful spell, yet his face remained placid, as if nothing were happening, as if he did not even care.

To him, brushing away the pests buzzing around might have felt no different. The gryphons, attacking with all their might, were simply too pitiful.

Roa worried whether Nostalgia and the twins below were being caught in the storm, but Uncle Gry would never harm the Twin Magic Wolves. He was likely limiting the effect area of his magic. They should be fine.

“If you’re not worried, Uncle Gry, then… fine.”

What he wanted to ask was whether they could really ignore enemies attacking them so desperately, but Uncle Gry clearly did not have them in his sights at all, so Roa swallowed the words.

“So, where’s the hostage?”

<Up there.>

Roa surveyed the surroundings. The floor of their current level lay close by. They could descend there and take the stairs up. With that in mind, Roa searched for a staircase within view.

<Brat, break the ceiling.>

“Huh?”

<If we want to go up, we must open a hole in this ceiling.>

“No, let me find the stairs—”

<That is tedious, is it not? Break it and we are done. The outer wall here cancels magic, but nothing else does. This is ordinary building material.>

Uncle Gry gave Roa a look that seemed to say, What foolishness are you spouting?

Roa was the one who wanted to say that.

“…Why me?”

<I am fully occupied keeping us aloft and dealing with these chicks. The idle brat should be the one to use magic, should he not?>

“…”

Anyone could see Uncle Gry was overrunning the gryphons with room to spare. Opening a hole in the ceiling looked like something he could do with one claw behind his back. Yet for some reason, he wanted Roa to do it.

Roa met Uncle Gry’s gaze head-on. When he lied or when something worked against him, Uncle Gry tended to avert his eyes. Now, despite the obvious false pretense, he looked straight back with a serious expression.

“…Fine. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but all right.”

With a long sigh, Roa agreed. He had said he did not understand, but he had a suspicion. The answer lay in the exchange they had when the gryphon using earth magic attacked at the start. Uncle Gry wanted Roa to cast magic in this situation and build confidence. At the very least, he wanted Roa to think himself above the members of Nostalgia.

Roa, however, considered his current power borrowed. The strength came from his familiar contract linking him to Uncle Gry, not from himself. That was why, when he became a proper adventurer, he wanted to be a swordsman who could fight more on his own merit, and when magic was unnecessary, he wanted to use only what his natural mana could cover.

Even if he cast a spell here to shatter the ceiling, he would chalk it up to Uncle Gry’s power. He would not see it as his own ability.

Roa’s deeply ingrained, ironclad low self-assessment and his innate stubbornness would not be shaken by something this small.

“Uncle Gry, move me close enough to put my hand on the ceiling.”

<Very well.>

After rising a little, Roa pressed his palm against the stone overhead.

“Ripple, Resonance.”

<Huh?>

For a moment the entire ceiling seemed to jump. Uncle Gry’s beak fell open as he let out a foolish sound. The ceiling began to vibrate. Fine, sandlike grit pattered down from the stonework, then slabs of rock started to peel free. Finally the ceiling directly above Roa gave way and began to collapse.

As the vault disintegrated, Roa smiled, satisfied, beneath it. Uncle Gry froze with his beak still open, but he did not forget to defend them: wind swept the falling debris aside so none of it struck the two of them.

“…Uncle Gry, this works, right?”

Roa spoke while looking up at the hole that now led straight through to the floor above. It was just large enough for the two of them to pass.

<…Wha…>

Uncle Gry, also staring up at the new opening, slowly turned to Roa.

<Wh-Why that spell!!? Why that!!>

“Eh?”

Barked at, Roa tilted his head.

“Why? Because you told me to break it?”

<…I did say that! But I meant break it with magic in the usual way. I did not tell you to do something so bizarre!>

“Bizarre?”

Roa frowned, unconvinced.

<I did not instruct you to perform acrobatics! That was the flashy one’s Detection Magic, was it not? How does that shatter stone? That is absurd! In the first place, it is far too crude to call a magic! So why does it produce an effect like earth magic? Do not do things that make my feathers crawl!>

“Make your feathers crawl?”

What Roa had used was an application of Kristoff’s Detection Magic (Sonar).

Its mechanism was simple: expand mana in evenly spaced ripples. It barely qualified as magic. During the golem incident in the Magic Beast Forest a month earlier, Roa had refined it and created a spell he called “Micro Wave.” By generating even finer waves of mana than Detection Magic, he could examine objects without breaking them. It resembled tapping ore with a hammer to impart vibration and check for internal bubbles.

By further tuning Micro Wave, he found he could also heat matter. The effect was similar to how ore heats up if you keep striking it with a hammer.

Micro Wave was one of Roa’s favorite spells. Because it let him inspect objects and heat them at will, it had countless uses for someone like him who brewed potions.

From there he developed another application: the one he had just used—“Ripple, Resonance.”

“This one is incredibly handy. It’s a great spell.”

<Hm…?>

“Even hard materials crumble to fine powder in an instant. No need to set up a hammer or a mortar.”

<…>

“The first time I discovered it was when I was heating a potion in a glass vessel with Micro Wave. The vessel suddenly cracked. I thought it broke from overheating, but the potion was not hot at all. When I investigated, I found that by adjusting the width of the Micro Wave, it could become a spell that breaks all sorts of things.”

<…>

Caught off guard by Roa’s sudden fervor, Uncle Gry faltered. Roa had clearly taken offense at having his favorite magic called bizarre and creepy. He rattled off how he discovered the spell’s properties and how useful it was.

As Roa said, the discovery had been accidental. The trigger was that glass vessel cracking under Micro Wave. It reminded Roa of a certain phenomenon: resonance.

It was well known among those involved in music. When one thing vibrates, another object may begin to vibrate in sympathy. That is resonance.

Many instruments exploit this effect. With a stringed instrument, a plucked string alone produces only a small sound. The body of the instrument resonates with that small vibration, making the whole instrument vibrate and yielding a larger sound.

Roa had learned of this from an instrument maker, and that resonance could also be used to break things. During instrument crafting, the same tone is sometimes sounded over and over for tuning. With instruments that produce especially loud sounds, if that tone resonates with something fragile and uniform like glass, the resonating object can no longer withstand the vibration and shatters.

The craftsman likely shared it as a tale of failure, but for Roa the underlying principle was what stuck.

He then realized, intuitively, that the cracked glass under Micro Wave and that resonance phenomenon were of the same kind. The Micro Wave he used at the time did not match the exact frequency that breaks glass, but he had been adjusting the waves roughly, and concluded he had happened to generate a destructive band as well.

Roa’s response from there was swift.

Through repeated experiments and training, he had finally mastered the ability to induce resonance freely and gained a spell that could shatter objects.

This magic, however, came with conditions. In essence, it could only affect materials that might break or crumble if struck with a hammer to induce vibration. Even so, it was extremely useful when pulverizing ingredients for potion-making.

The resonance spell depended heavily on the caster’s finesse in controlling mana. Roa had even taught it to alchemists of the Coralde Trading Company, but none had succeeded. In fact, none had even managed the simpler “Micro Wave” spell for heating. While Kristoff’s original Detection Magic (Sonar) could be handled by anyone, its applications had only ever succeeded in Roa’s hands.

Kristoff’s Detection Magic was akin to striking the surface of water to create ripples. Anyone could make ripples, but crafting them fine and evenly increased the difficulty exponentially. Heating or resonating with it required sustaining countless minuscule, invisible waves in perfect uniformity; an impossible task for ordinary people.

That Roa could perform it so easily was what was abnormal. Roa himself, however, considered it simply a matter of compatibility, unaware that he was doing anything extraordinary.

“…And that’s why it’s incredibly useful!”

<…>

After the long explanation, Uncle Gry gazed at him with a pitiful expression, deep wrinkles carved into his brow. He had remained silent throughout.

<…Brat, you…>

“Hm?”

Roa looked back as Uncle Gry suddenly spoke.

<…Brat, you’re strange! Why would you do something so absurd!? Just use earth magic like normal! Why go out of your way to perform circus tricks? Magic is meant to be structured precisely to achieve the intended phenomenon. This sort of haphazard, sensation-driven nonsense isn’t magic at all!>

“What? But Uncle Gry, you’ve done plenty of the same, haven’t you? The spell you used to burn the insects—you fanned fire magic with wind magic to force it wider and burn them all, right? Isn’t that the same?”

<I told you, that just happened by chance!>

“By chance? But you just said magic is supposed to be structured precisely. You’re saying you didn’t aim for it?”

<It was by chance!!>

The two glared at each other, faces so close they were almost touching, eyes locked in a contest. After a few seconds of silence, Roa was the one to relent, exhaling in exasperation.

“…Anyway, Uncle Gry, what about that?”

Roa repeated the same words he had used earlier, pointing down at his feet.

<Hm?>

This time Uncle Gry reacted properly. The storm that had been raging moments ago had vanished, and the Gryphons were nowhere to be seen. Even the one bound by magic, the Gryphon using earth magic, had disappeared.

<…Because of you, brat, I lost focus and failed to maintain control of my magic…>

The Gryphons, who had been attacking so desperately, must have switched to escape the instant the wind magic subsided and the bindings were undone. The other magic beasts caught up in it were gone as well—they had all fled. Only corpses remained.

“Huh? My fault?”

<It’s because of your absurd antics, brat!!>

Uncle Gry had intended to instill confidence in Roa, yet somehow ended up chastising him for being ridiculous. Realizing this, Uncle Gry could only feel disheartened.

𑁋

Next→